Fixed IP

Simple question really. Is it possible to obtain from Virgin Cable a fixed IP address and if so what is the cost?

David

Nope.

Not 100% correct.

You can get a fixed IP on a business service, but expect to pay muuuuuucccchhhh more per month for the luxury.

It also also been known for them to require it be changed when they change network address assignments.

Matt

In reply to a post by uno:

Not 100% correct.

You can get a fixed IP on a business service, but expect to pay muuuuuucccchhhh more per month for the luxury.

It also also been known for them to require it be changed when they change network address assignments.

Not 100% correct!
it's an extra £10 a month for the so-called "fixed" IP address on Business Broadband. "Fixed" means "will stay the same until we move your connections to a different UBR, or do another network reorganisation, or some other reason". They now commit to telling you in advance about this change of IP address, whereas previously you found that your Exchange Server didn't work any more on a Monday morning. We've 'only' had it happen a total of three times on three separate cable lines in five years...

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

Simple question really. Is it possible to obtain from Virgin Cable a fixed IP address and if so what is the cost?

David

To answer the original post. Even though consumers can't get a 'fixed' IP address, in practice the IP address you get can stay unchanged for several years. Think "DHCP reservation". My home IP address has stayed the same for at least 2½ years. Which is not to say it won't change tomorrow!

In reply to a post by JohnGray7581:

In reply to a post by uno:

Not 100% correct.

You can get a fixed IP on a business service, but expect to pay muuuuuucccchhhh more per month for the luxury.

It also also been known for them to require it be changed when they change network address assignments.

Not 100% correct!
it's an extra £10 a month for the so-called "fixed" IP address on Business Broadband. "Fixed" means "will stay the same until we move your connections to a different UBR, or do another network reorganisation, or some other reason". They now commit to telling you in advance about this change of IP address, whereas previously you found that your Exchange Server didn't work any more on a Monday morning. We've 'only' had it happen a total of three times on three separate cable lines in five years...

This is all very frustrating and quite beyond me why the facility is not available on the domestic cable service. It is true that a dynamic assignment doesn't change that often but my experience has been a change does occur at least once a year.

My Company gives me the opportunity to connect into the office remotely for data and voice but for added security requires my IP address to be added into their firewall. Supplying the dynamically supplied IP address is all I can oblige them with and that's fine for quite a while. But sods law when the IP address does change it always seems to be when sysadmin are not available coupled with an urgent need for a remote connection.

If other domestic broadband suppliers are able to supply a fix IP address then why can't it be made available to virgin customers? And why should it cost so much to have it when it is available?

Comments about Fixed IPs changing with Virgin was an interesting aside and really suprising. I sure the same doesn't happen with other ISPs.

David

Virgin and Sky are both fussy in this area, i.e. if you are using a domestic connection for business they might want to force you onto the business products.

BT do similar in that if you order a domestic package on a business phone line they refuse order.

On the static IP - have had same static from Zen since 2001, and that included moving 20 miles down the road, and numerous changes in line from 0.5Meg, to 1Meg to 2Meg to Max.

require it be changed

I knew this, and its therefore not fixed I have had a fixed IP for more than two years now and even with network IP changes from entanet my static gateway IP remains the same.

Your talking about the IP addresses your own home router assigns, yes, you can reserve an IP for a particular MAC address is most routers. You cannot however force to keep your own IP address if its not static as after a resync your gateway IP will change.

In reply to a post by krazykizza:

Your talking about the IP addresses your own home router assigns, yes, you can reserve an IP for a particular MAC address is most routers. You cannot however force to keep your own IP address if its not static as after a resync your gateway IP will change.

I don't think he is. On Virgin, provided you don't have your service off for more than a few days (trying to find the exact time from my logs but I'm struggling) and don't change your MAC address of the device connected to the modem then the IP wont change unless Virgin do engineering work that mean you can no longer have that IP.

I've only had 3 IPs since I've been with Virgin. 1 on 20Mb, another on 50Mb (different router) and I got moved to a completely different UBR in December last year and got my 3rd.

In reply to a post by JohnGray7581:

In reply to a post by uno:

Not 100% correct.

You can get a fixed IP on a business service, but expect to pay muuuuuucccchhhh more per month for the luxury.

It also also been known for them to require it be changed when they change network address assignments.

Not 100% correct!
it's an extra £10 a month for the so-called "fixed" IP address on Business Broadband. "Fixed" means "will stay the same until we move your connections to a different UBR, or do another network reorganisation, or some other reason". They now commit to telling you in advance about this change of IP address, whereas previously you found that your Exchange Server didn't work any more on a Monday morning. We've 'only' had it happen a total of three times on three separate cable lines in five years...

In practice thats no different to what a residental customer gets.

Typically any VM ip will stay the same unless a reseg, move between overlay and legacy or the modem is off for a 'long' time. It will also change if the connecting MAC changes eg. change cable modem but that is also something that should be rare.

With the recent upgrade to 30MB (and thus a new modem / move to DOCSIS 3) my IP has changed. Prior to the upgrade, I had the same IP address for just shy of 2 years.

Edited by deleted (Wed 16-Feb-11 19:24:28)

In reply to a post by Roph:

With the recent upgrade to 30MB (and thus a new modem / move to DOCSIS 3) my IP has changed. Prior to the upgrade, I had the same IP address for just shy of 2 years.

and would have been the same for a business user. Your ip will very likely stay the same now unless you downgrade again or change modem.

Sadly I think it's just one of those things.

Sure it can be annoying but many other residential ISPs don't offer static IP's either.

Just a thought, rather than providing an IP address to the admins where you work, are you able to maybe give them a domain name instead and use something like DynDNS?

Rob

In reply to a post by EnglishRob:

Sadly I think it's just one of those things.

Sure it can be annoying but many other residential ISPs don't offer static IP's either.

Just a thought, rather than providing an IP address to the admins where you work, are you able to maybe give them a domain name instead and use something like DynDNS?

Rob

I guess the rationale behind all this is that an IP address is a valuable resource not to be wasted but with "always on" connections surely a dynamically assigned IP address is going to be captured and retained for quite some time so why don't we all have a fixed IP address and be done with it?

Could you please explain in detail your observation about DynDNS or refer me to other URLs where I could learn more about this? It might be a solution.

With may thanks to all who contributed to this thread.

David

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

In reply to a post by EnglishRob:

Sadly I think it's just one of those things.

Sure it can be annoying but many other residential ISPs don't offer static IP's either.

Just a thought, rather than providing an IP address to the admins where you work, are you able to maybe give them a domain name instead and use something like DynDNS?

Rob

I guess the rationale behind all this is that an IP address is a valuable resource not to be wasted but with "always on" connections surely a dynamically assigned IP address is going to be captured and retained for quite some time so why don't we all have a fixed IP address and be done with it?

Could you please explain in detail your observation about DynDNS or refer me to other URLs where I could learn more about this? It might be a solution.

With may thanks to all who contributed to this thread.

David

Sure, basically DynDNS (and other such services such as NoIP and a whole load of other providers) basically offer a DNS hostname which resolves to your IP address. I've been using DynDNS now for around 6 or 7 years.

How it works is there is either a small client app which runs on your PC (or server) which detects your IP address on the internet, it then sends this IP address to the DynDNS server which registers it against a host name. You can then look up the hostname and it resolves to your IP address. It checks every couple of hours I believe and if the IP address changes it updates the entry. Usually most routers have a client built in too which do the same thing (this is how I do it with my Virgin provided Netgear router) so when my IP changes it notifies the DynDNS server.

Generally you can get a basic Dynamic DNS service for free (DynDNS offer a basic free service) but if you want something a bit more fancy (such as a your own domain name pointing to an IP) then it costs something like $12 a year.

Thinking about it though, your work system may do a reverse DNS query in which case it would get a Virgin Media host name rather than a DynDNS address. But on the other hand it could be worth trying since it's free and only takes a couple of minutes to setup.

Rob