Dynamic IP

Hello,

I have been using Zen Internet for some 10 years now, and whilst using their services I have always been under a static IP.

I was wondering if perhaps there are any plans or options to convert to a dyanmic IP, as a situation arose from the static IP quite recently.

Essentially a cretinous little irk decided to initiate a Denial of Service attack on my IP address, and held my services down for 24 hours. Upon calling Zen they effectively told me that due to my must have provoked this attack it is effectively my problem and not theirs.

My only option was to regrade to an 8 IP option, which would reset my IP to a new one. This alleviated the subsequent attacks, but of course I fear if my new IP is exposed this could quite easily occur again.

While illegal and I did manage to grab packet captures and logs from my router and firewalling devices, I obtained the IPs that seemed to be attacking, and reported them to their respective providers.

Upon thorough investigation and multiple frustrating phone calls it would appear these IPs belong to a web host off shore in Germany and another in Russia, whom have completely ignored my reports in their entirety.

Is this not disgustingly against the law and more to the point, Zen ultimately should offer a dynamic IP to discourage this type of brute force attack. The reason why is simple indeed - because sometimes genuinely that person did NOT "deserve" that attack, and frankly I am still shocked after so much loyalty that Zen decided I simply must have.

Not once in 10 years have I had any reports against my name, my services, or any kind of attack, until just recently.

Anyhow, I believe it is inevitable that I will move to a different provider now purely for the dynamic IP, that way at least if some child decides to play Internet games I can disconnect/reconnect my equipment and continue running my business (which I manage from home via the Internet by the way Zen - hint hint - that is why I have a business account with you, meaning when those children play games I am potentially at risk of loss of earnings).

Thank you,

Lee.

Apologies for the rant but it has been a rather long and stressful ordeal.

Edited by deleted (Mon 19-Sep-11 13:24:22)

I would just relax and forget about the past.

I understand what you are saying, but what I am concerned about is that I may fall under attack again, and last time it was 24 hours of down time.

What really makes me fume though, is the way Zen point blank refused to help me, and charged me £30-40 to regrade my IP so I could change, only to another static IP which may suffer the same.

So basically, if some child decides to initiate a DoS attack on my Internet service, I have to pay my provider £30-40 to change my IP every time, which takes 12 hours to change.

Is that not a little bit ridiculous after 10 years of paying for high grade business DSL?

Even BT Internet aren't that way.

Zen is perfect but this is the exception sadly. I like the reliability, speed, and general tech support - they're friendly and trustworthy - but I feel cheated.

Any reason why anyone would target you with a DDOS?

While I sympathise there is very little an ISP can do as the only real way to defend a DDOS is to throw lots of bandwidth at it, thus creating a 'sink' until the instigator gets bored.

Companies such as Prolexic and Gigenet offer a DDOS filtering solutiuon but its not likely to be cheap but maybe worth considering if you are concerned that your business is going to be repeatedly targeted.

Edited by techguy (Mon 19-Sep-11 15:25:17)

Most ISPs that issue a dynamic IP address don't change it every time you connect - it may stay the same for considerable periods; so your "solution" may not be. Welcome to the Internet.

And if one of your addresses attracts an extended DOS attack (why, by the way? it is not that common), that's a real shame for the next person who gets allocated it (whether dynamically, or in Zen's case some later customer)!

Paul

I gather the OP is more frustrated by the fact he feels that Zen seemed to blame him for the DDOS attack. Certainly I would not be very happy in his shoes if my ISP refused to help and I was paying for the business package (which does have a fair premium!)

A lot depends on what the user asked for, generally ISP's can block IP addresses on the border routers if given the details.

Dynamic is not the solution, as some poor unsuspecting sole would get the IP address, and IPv4 does not have enough addresses to afford black holing them every time this happens.

DDoS an ADSL connection is also generally so little traffic that an ISP would not really notice, perhaps why less attention given at the time.

Hello,

It was some cretinous little irk or another - I'm unsure specifically why I was bombarded for so long but my router logs indicate the attack lasted a substantial amount of time.

During which it was forcefully reset numerous times, what happens when this type of attack hits an 8 Mbps download DSL line is just red light after a short time, so it just sits constantly reconnecting. If it refreshed it's IP or could by option this would indeed be solved, because while you say dynamic is not a solution I disagree.

If the attacker recognises the IP is dynamic, they are unlikely to even bother, but besides that the "next" unsuspecting person would simply end up reset and change again.

It is certainly better than going to bed with no Internet, waking up with no Internet, then upon calling my ISP whom I have been absolutely loyal to and recommended for 10 years on one of their most expensive packages, say they cannot help me and then proceed to charge me to change my IP. I was no longer under attack but I am not going to risk having an IP which has already been attacked for 24 hours or more, because if they decide to do it again I cannot afford to spend so long off the Internet.

I am a software developer and web developer so being online is imperative for me.

I am not saying Zen are responsible for blocking the attack - I know enough about this to know exactly why they cannot, but a dynamic IP would alleviate this stress in practice.

I don't particularly want to change ISP for this reason alone, it is simply a question that I feel is worth some thought.

There is another aspect to consider by the way - upon logging into the portal, after paying a substantial fee for a new IP, I noticed this "attack" had also sucked up gigabytes of my allowance, which is another thing that is not cheap from Zen.

Your solution of having several static IPs is the same as having a dynamic IP, without the collateral damage caused to others.

If being online is imperitive, why not just use your alternate connection?

At the £10 to drive to office for me, running two connections to give some degree of failover - one Zen and one LLU, is worth while.

Some routers have DoS protection, and if the router was resyncing it sounds like it was crashing, i.e. may not have been a DoS, but they spotted a specific router with a vulnerability that would make it crash. DoS should simply saturate a connection to the point of no traffic, if a router is crashing, then suggests poor software.