Static ip address using 3mobile

Regwinch

Having just moved to Ireland I had no idea in the county the Internet is difficult to get. I've a 3 mobile router, all works ok, but I need a static ip address and the guys at 3 say this is impossible. Anyone aware of an application or fix at al? I'm not very technical, but not totally dumb at techie stuff, thanks in advance

Regwinch

For county read country, apologies

jor el

Moved to Midband.

You can't get a static IP with Three, and whatever it is you're trying to do may not even work. Try DynDNS maybe.

PogMoThoin

Its not possible, all 3 customers on this Island share only a handful of public ip addresses.
What are You trying to do?

Regwinch

Hi, thanks for reply.

My 3 router provides me with a dynamic address and as you say, 3 say it's not poss to provide me with a static. I need a static to monitor my CCTV camera when I'm away from the house, which I can do thru an iPhone app.

watty

You need real broadband for that kind of application.

You can run a Dyndns client at home and then use a domain name to connect to real home broadband, even if it is using a dynamic IP.

But 3G is almost instant connection dialup. Unless you are doing something from the home connection the connection isn't there, so there is nothing for the iPhone to connect to as the IP isn't assigned till your Home 3G "dials up".

Real Broadband is "always on" and many Modem/Routers or Routers have a built in DyDNS client, which otherwise you can run periodically on a home PC. Then you put a domain name into the iPhone instead of IP and it will connect to the Real Home Broadband connection even if it's a dynamic IP

jor el

watty wrote: »

But 3G is almost instant connection dialup. Unless you are doing something from the home connection the connection isn't there, so there is nothing for the iPhone to connect to as the IP isn't assigned till your Home 3G "dials up".

To pre-empt the inevitable question of "Can't I just connect before I head out, and leave it connected?", the answer is yes, but it won't stay connected indefinitely. How long it stays connected will be random and uncontrollable. Probably no more than hours.

watty

Can be as little as minutes if no traffic. Hours if you have a "ping" or other low traffic application running to try and keep it open

http://www.techtir.ie/comms/mobile-vs-fixed

The static vs fixed IP is not the problem

jay93

All my modems stayed connected for days the only network that disconnected the whole time around here was vodafone all others seem to be able to hold a connection better

watty

How do you know they stayed connected?

jay93

Because the light was always solid on the modem for 3days and i could use it whenever i wanted over them days as my computer is usually always on it dropped tough after 4days not very consistant luckily i have UTV DSL now so 3 are only a back up now for me havnt had any probs yet with utv

PogMoThoin

jay93 wrote: »

Because the light was always solid on the modem for 3days and i could use it whenever i wanted over them days as my computer is usually always on it dropped tough after 4days not very consistant luckily i have UTV DSL now so 3 are only a back up now for me havnt had any probs yet with utv

That's not really a definitive way of knowing that it didn't drop, it could have dropped and re-dialed in seconds. You could end up with a completely different public ip and not know it. Windows checks for Windows updates, antivirus and installed software updates every few minutes. Depending on the state of Your Windows with malware, viruses etc, it may keep the connection open by passing traffic. Mobile is a dial up connection, it will drop when traffic ceases.

jay93

PogMoThoin wrote: »

That's not really a definitive way of knowing that it didn't drop, it could have dropped and re-dialed in seconds. You could end up with a completely different public ip and not know it. Windows checks for Windows updates, antivirus and installed software updates every few minutes. Depending on the state of Your Windows with malware, viruses etc, it may keep the connection open by passing traffic. Mobile is a dial up connection, it will drop when traffic ceases.

I set the computer to not re dial by itself!also have all forms of updates disabled hate when they eat your allowance witout even knowing :)also I have a world ip add on for firefox which will display my ip and sites ip's that im on another way of checking if it drops see if the ip for the connection changes!

PogMoThoin

jay93 wrote: »

I set the computer to not re dial by itself!also have all forms of updates disabled hate when they eat your allowance witout even knowing :)also I have a world ip add on for firefox which will display my ip and sites ip's that im on another way of checking if it drops see if the ip for the connection changes!

There's no way of knowing Your pc wasn't doing something every few minutes, like all Windows pc's do. Install wireshark and see how often Your pc contacts the internet while idle, You'll be very suprised
http://www.wireshark.org/

watty

Windows does ARP quite often on the WAN

I've gathered together some links and post on the subject here http://www.techtir.ie/3g-lies-continue

daveoc16

Hi just wondering how you got on with this issue? I am currently about to install CCTV and want to remote access. My only real internet options are the Three wireless, and possibly o2. I have a Three dongle and was going to get a wireless router. But CCTV guys say i don't have a fixed IP with Three and their system needs this. Did you succeed with your remote access using Three????? dying to know as this is close to my last resort!!

TskTsk

daveoc16 wrote: »

Hi just wondering how you got on with this issue? I am currently about to install CCTV and want to remote access.

Sorry for jumping in to the thread, but I thought I'd share my experience with 3 Mobile midband. I had hoped to use it in the same way as you... to monitor CCTV via a mobile router at a remote location. To make story short, it does work intermittently but it's completely unreliable.

The mobile router (Dovado) attempts to keep the connection alive by making regular connections to user-defined websites. It's also set up to restart itself if the net connection fails for an extended period. This could work for weeks on end, then all of a sudden it just drops off the map entirely. The router stops updating with DynDNS and that's the end of it.

As others have said, it's just not suitable for CCTV monitoring or other home automation tasks. I don't know what the underlying issue is though, because the mobile reception is fine and I suspect contention/congestion is low at that location. I think watty and others mentioned that 3 Ireland have a very limited pool of public IP addresses, so they must be doing some fairly severe NATing to get around the resource issues.