What DSL providers don't do daily restarts?

n97 mini

Well known is the Vodafone (and Perlico and formerly BT) practice of restarting connections with a new IP address every 24 hours. This makes it impossible to use either of these ISPs for serious business use.

Aside from eircom and Digiweb, what other DSL providers don't do daily restarts and are thus suitable for serious use?

TIA

pizzahead77

If you need an ISP for business use, why not request a static IP address from them as part of a business package?

Eircom charge a one off fee of about €50 for a static IP address if it isn't included as part of the bundle.


Smart Telecom usually don't renew the IP addresses every day.

PogMoThoin

They'll sell You one if You sign up to a business connection, thats the idea.

roast

If you're signed up to a residential package, you get what a residential package entails. That is, a dynamic IP.

Sign up to a business package, you can get a static IP bundle for an extra price.

PogMoThoin

http://www.dyndns.com/

hobochris

n97 mini wrote: »

Well known is the Vodafone (and Perlico and formerly BT) practice of restarting connections with a new IP address every 24 hours. This makes it impossible to use either of these ISPs for serious business use.

Aside from eircom and Digiweb, what other DSL providers don't do daily restarts and are thus suitable for serious use?

TIA

By serious use, I take it your talking about hosting a website, The upload speed on a domestic DSL package would not really suit this, causing delayed loading times for the site.

you can request a static IP from most ISPs but standard practice is a DHCP refresh once a day.

As suggested a DNS proxy like http://www.dyndns.com/ could be a work around, but the upload speed would still be my main concern.

It may be better to look into getting hosting such a a rented vps server as speed wont be an issue form the data center where the server is.

korbend

n97 mini wrote: »

Aside from eircom and Digiweb, what other DSL providers don't do daily restarts and are thus suitable for serious use?

TIA

I am on a UPC residential package (Fibre Power Broadband 5Mb) and my IP address has been static for at least the last 3 months. I can't say before that as I never checked it.

I don't know whether it's guaranteed to remain static though.

roast

korbend wrote: »

I am on a UPC residential package (Fibre Power Broadband 5Mb) and my IP address has been static for at least the last 3 months. I can't say before that as I never checked it.

I don't know whether it's guaranteed to remain static though.

Its not guaranteed to stay static, although it more than likely will be. I've used UPC in several different houses, and the IP has only changed whenever I moved, with the exception of when my line was upgraded to Fiber. UPC dont even provide a static IP bundle.

With ADSL technology, the connection times out, and randomly selects an IP address from a pool of availible IP's. If you sign up for a static IP service, then a particular IP is reserved for you, and when the modem-exchange connection times out and is reset, the same IP is designated for your modem.

jor el

n97 mini wrote: »

Aside from eircom and Digiweb, what other DSL providers don't do daily restarts and are thus suitable for serious use?

Define serious use. eircom also resets every night, as do most DSL providers. This should not be an issue to any serious user, except if a serious user wants to host a website, then they'll do it properly and use a web hosting company. Anything less is amateur and lazy, not to mention a security risk and likely a breech of policy.

If it's not for server use, what is the restart doing that's hampering your serious usage of the Internet connection?

n97 mini

jor el wrote: »

Define serious use.

SSH sessions, tunnels, and VPN use.

I have no requirement for hosting.

jor el wrote: »

eircom also resets every night, as do most DSL providers.

No they don't. Eircom don't (I have a line with them) and Digiweb don't (I used to have a line with them).

jor el wrote: »

This should not be an issue to any serious user

Hmm. Your post is generally unhelpful.

n97 mini

korbend wrote: »

I am on a UPC residential package (Fibre Power Broadband 5Mb) and my IP address has been static for at least the last 3 months. I can't say before that as I never checked it.

Thanks for the suggestion but unfortunately UPC is not an option at the moment, tho I had a line with them in the past and the IP address didn't change for the 15 months or so I was with them. The service was also very reliable.

roast

n97 mini wrote: »

SSH sessions, tunnels, and VPN use.

I have no requirement for hosting.

No they don't. Eircom don't (I have a line with them) and Digiweb don't (I used to have a line with them).


Hmm. Your post is generally unhelpful.

Eircom certainly do reset. You may keep the same IP address as the previous day, but they do reset, and you could find yourself with a totally different IP. Unless of course you have purchased a static IP. Digiwebs DSL broadband is also the same.

n97 mini

roast wrote: »

Eircom certainly do reset. You may keep the same IP address as the previous day, but they do reset, and you could find yourself with a totally different IP. Unless of course you have purchased a static IP. Digiwebs DSL broadband is also the same.

My logs for the last 10 days show my eircom connection has not changed.

When I was with Digiweb one of the appeals was the IP address is static. I don't recall my connection ever being reset.

There is a blog post here about the kind of issues Vodafone's practice causes:

http://taint.org/2006/04/13/140841a.html

roast

n97 mini wrote: »

My logs for the last 10 days show my eircom connection has not changed.

When I was with Digiweb one of the appeals was the IP address is static. I don't recall my connection ever being reset.

There is a blog post here about the kind of issues Vodafone's practice causes:

http://taint.org/2006/04/13/140841a.html

From the customers end, you cannot view when the modem times out. In fact, the modem will display a log showing how long it has been connected to the exchange, but not display when the exchange times out. Its not a modem/CPE/client side change, its an exchange change.

lucernarian

n97 mini wrote: »

Well known is the Vodafone (and Perlico and formerly BT) practice of restarting connections with a new IP address every 24 hours. This makes it impossible to use either of these ISPs for serious business use.

Aside from eircom and Digiweb, what other DSL providers don't do daily restarts and are thus suitable for serious use?

TIA

I just want to clarify something: When you say "restart", do you mean that there is some sort of IP address change and that's that, or do you mean that when the IP address changes, you either have to turn off and back on the router or perform a manual restart of the router? Two very different issues, and I have seen the latter happening with Vodafone and ex-BT connections on certain modems.

ArseBurger

PogMoThoin wrote: »

They'll sell You one if You sign up to a business connection, thats the idea.

No they don't. They charge you an administration fee for the supply of IP.

Under RIPE rules you cannot 'sell' an IP address or range as they are not capital property. All IP belongs to IANA.

lynchie

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

I just want to clarify something: When you say "restart", do you mean that there is some sort of IP address change and that's that, or do you mean that when the IP address changes, you either have to turn off and back on the router or perform a manual restart of the router? Two very different issues, and I have seen the latter happening with Vodafone and ex-BT connections on certain modems.

When the OP talks about resetting, he is describing the process where the pppoe session is terminated on the exchange side, thereby causing the dsl modem to timeout and renegotiate the ppp session again. With the vodafone piece of junk router it takes roughly 60 seconds for your connection to come back online.

With eircom this NEVER happened. I could keep a ssh session open for 72 hours no problem without disruption. Eircom's radius server doesnt force a session timeout after 24 hours whereas vodafone does

Nemeses

n97 mini wrote: »

SSH sessions, tunnels, and VPN use.
...
No they don't. Eircom don't (I have a line with them) and Digiweb don't (I used to have a line with them).

VPN use? If i'm not mistaken... Doesn't the host need the static IP not the client?

Also, Eircom is a DSL provider and like all DSL providers, they would reset the IP address every 24hrs or there after. You may have been lucky the session went past the 24hr mark.. Needless to say, It's still a Dynamic IP.
If you need a static IP, I'd recommend talking to your ISP provider and try purchase / rent a static one..

Cabaal

Nemeses wrote: »

VPN use? If i'm not mistaken... Doesn't the host need the static IP not the client?

That would be correct unless of course he's stricting access except from a set IP or he's actually running a VPN server on his DSL line, if he's on a standard residential package he'll likely find running a server is against the T&C's.

n97 mini

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

I just want to clarify something: When you say "restart", do you mean that there is some sort of IP address change and that's that, or do you mean that when the IP address changes, you either have to turn off and back on the router or perform a manual restart of the router? Two very different issues, and I have seen the latter happening with Vodafone and ex-BT connections on certain modems.

roast wrote:

From the customers end, you cannot view when the modem times out

A PADT is being sent to the modem, terminating the connection. The modem is syslog capable and this is logged. Whatever way the PADT comes from Vodafone it hangs my modem, requiring me to physically turn it off and on again.

Nemeses wrote:

VPN use? If i'm not mistaken... Doesn't the host need the static IP not the client?

You are mistaken!

Nemeses wrote:

eircom... they would reset the IP address every 24hrs or there after.

Lease time is far longer than 24 hours on eircom. As long as the customer doesn't terminate the connection the IP address won't change for days or even weeks.

Folks I'm not here to argue the finer points. I'm looking for DSL providers that don't force down connections regularly and are thus suitable for teleworking power users.

So far those that are
Unsuitable: Vodafone, Perlico (and formerly BT).
Suitable: eircom, Digiweb
Possibilities: Magnet

n97 mini

Cabaal wrote: »

That would be correct

I run several OpenVPN clients. If I need a static IP address on the client side you'd better tell the OpenVPN guys, as you seem to know more than they do!

lucernarian

lynchie wrote: »

When the OP talks about resetting, he is describing the process where the pppoe session is terminated on the exchange side, thereby causing the dsl modem to timeout and renegotiate the ppp session again. With the vodafone piece of junk router it takes roughly 60 seconds for your connection to come back online.

With eircom this NEVER happened. I could keep a ssh session open for 72 hours no problem without disruption. Eircom's radius server doesnt force a session timeout after 24 hours whereas vodafone does

Based on the OP's subsequent answers, it appears he's not talking simply about a PPPoE lease renewal.

n97 mini, you didn't quite answer my question that I could tell and I don't know quite enough about PPPoE to talk about PADT requests. Simply put, is your problem with Vodafone that they forcibly give your router a new IP address or that you have to manually restart the router whenever this happens, as the router won't renew the connections?

Could you mention if it's one or the other or neither?

Nemeses

n97 mini wrote: »

A PADT is being sent to the modem, terminating the connection. The modem is syslog capable and this is logged. Whatever way the PADT comes from Vodafone it hangs my modem, requiring me to physically turn it off and on again.

That issue could also be a problem with your line if you keep having to reboot the modem, It mightn't necessarily be a IP renewal issue.

n97 mini wrote: »

You are mistaken!

I don't I'm am... Looking into OpenVPN as we speak. this might / might not help http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=5340.0

n97 mini wrote: »

Lease time is far longer than 24 hours on eircom. As long as the customer doesn't terminate the connection the IP address won't change for days or even weeks.

Most DSL providers provide a IP for 24hrs or so. I have never come across an eircom BB connection that has had an IP address for more than a day or two the most.

n97 mini wrote: »

Folks I'm not here to argue the finer points. I'm looking for DSL providers that don't force down connections regularly and are thus suitable for teleworking power users.

So far those that are
Unsuitable: Vodafone, Perlico (and formerly BT).
Suitable: eircom, Digiweb
Possibilities: Magnet

Magnet is an interesting one.their IP address are dynamic - but don't change as often. Got a feeling its something to do with their equipment at the exchange as its fiber based but DSL to the premises there after.

lucernarian

Nemeses wrote: »

Most DSL providers provide a IP for 24hrs or so. I have never come across an eircom BB connection that has had an IP address for more than a day or two the most.

Nor have I come to think of it. I'm typing this from an eircom connection.

Cabaal

n97 mini wrote: »

I run several OpenVPN clients. If I need a static IP address on the client side you'd better tell the OpenVPN guys, as you seem to know more than they do!

Re-read my post, I agreed with the poster saying the client does not need a static IP.

The only reason why the client might need a static IP is if you wanted to restrict sessions to the host to specific client IP's. Given your lack of details in the opening post it was hard to know what you required

n97 mini

Nemeses wrote: »

Most DSL providers provide a IP for 24hrs or so.

From experience this only applies to Vodafone, Perlico, and BT before they passed their business to Vodafone.

Nemeses wrote: »

I have never come across an eircom BB connection that has had an IP address for more than a day or two the most.

I suspect I might be in this business a bit longer than you. I haven't actually measured but I have an ssh session open on my eircom line now for almost 7 days. I find this typical, and I have dealt with hundreds of dsl installations by now.

Cabaal wrote:

Re-read my post, I agreed with the poster saying the client does not need a static IP.

My apologies. I misread your original post.

Cabaal wrote:

Given your lack of details in the opening post it was hard to know what you required

I thought I was very clear: names of DSL providers that don't do daily restarts!

Nemeses

n97 mini wrote: »

From experience this only applies to Vodafone, Perlico, and BT before they passed their business to Vodafone.

I suspect I might be in this business a bit longer than you. I haven't actually measured but I have an ssh session open on my eircom line now for almost 7 days. I find this typical, and I have dealt with hundreds of dsl installations by now.

I can assure you I am fairly qualified in the IT field without having to brag or boast.
I have a very vast amount of knowledge in DSL tech and PC tech. I didn't spend all my years googlin'!

n97 mini wrote: »

I thought I was very clear: names of DSL providers that don't do daily restarts!

I gave you one.. Magnet.

n97 mini

Nemeses wrote: »

That issue could also be a problem with your line if you keep having to reboot the modem, It mightn't necessarily be a IP renewal issue.

This line and router have been through many ISPs by now. Only have this problem with Voda, and googling shows I'm not alone.

Nemeses wrote: »

I can assure you I am fairly qualified in the IT field without having to brag or boast.

Good for you, but your experiences of DSL and mine don't seem to tally.

Nemeses wrote: »

I gave you one.. Magnet.

I thought I suggested Magnet. Never mind.

I had a one company's lines all with Netsource who were bought out by Magnet. Netsource IP addresses, like Digiweb's, were static. They remained static under Magnet until the contract was awarded elsewhere.

Do you know specifically how long Magnet's leases last?

Nemeses

Can last for a week or a few days, varies but not much. I can check it out and monitor it if you want as I am with them.Might take a few days

lucernarian

n97 mini, you didn't quite answer my question that I could tell and I don't know quite enough about PPPoE to talk about PADT requests. Simply put, is your problem with Vodafone that they forcibly give your router a new IP address or that you have to manually restart the router/connection whenever this happens, as the router won't automatically renew the connections?

Could you mention if your issue one or the other or neither?

n97 mini

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

n97 mini, you didn't quite answer my question that I could tell and I don't know quite enough about PPPoE to talk about PADT requests. Simply put, is your problem with Vodafone that they forcibly give your router a new IP address or that you have to manually restart the router/connection whenever this happens, as the router won't automatically renew the connections?

Could you mention if your issue one or the other or neither?

I have recompiled the firmware for my modem and have included a cron job that reboots it every 23 hours and 45 minutes. If it is up for 24 hours Vodafone will send a "restart" which will hang the modem, requiring me to physically power cycle the modem. The cron job allows me to avoid this hang.

Sometimes they send restarts, typically at weekends, that are maybe only 4 hours since my modem automatically rebooted itself. This causes the modem to require a physical power cycle.

I have put up with this for some time now, but the weekend restarts are getting more frequent, and they are the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak. Moving to another ISP would give me the convenience of having an IP address that doesn't change quite so frequently too.

If I didn't have the use of a stable eircom line I wouldn't have put up with Vodafone for as long as I have tbh.

Nemeses wrote:

Can last for a week or a few days, varies but not much. I can check it out and monitor it if you want as I am with them.Might take a few days

Their tech support should be able to answer that question. I have always found them to be knowledgeable.

Nemeses

n97 mini wrote: »

If I didn't have the use of a stable eircom line I wouldn't have put up with Vodafone for as long as I have tbh.

Their tech support should be able to answer that question. I have always found them to be knowledgeable.

Magnet's tech support line isn't the best to be honest from my own experience.
I don't need to contact them, My connection is fine and so are my IP addresses. If you need to know how often they renewals faster than my method. I'd advise you give them a call. or even better.. drop Magnet Rory a line here on boards, He's a pretty cool guy

I'd also advise ringing VF tech line - there could be an underlying cause to your connection which is causing it to restart more than once a day.(if I read your post correctly)

homer911

Slightly off topic, but I am paying €4 a month to VF on top of my BB package for a static IP address. With 3 young teenagers in the house I want some control over their WIFI internet usage from their phones (they wont/cant pay for mobile broadband/3G)

OpenDNS with webfiltering and a fixed IP address gives some peace of mind, but its far from perfect

n97 mini

Nemeses wrote: »

I'd also advise ringing VF tech line -

Did so twice. You know more about it than they do!

home911 wrote:

Slightly off topic, but I am paying €4 a month to VF on top of my BB package for a static IP address.

Unfortunately that doesn't stop the daily restarts afaik.

n97 mini

Nemeses wrote: »

Magnet's tech support line isn't the best to be honest from my own experience...
I'd advise you give them a call.

Huh?

Nemeses wrote: »

drop Magnet Rory a line here on boards, He's a pretty cool guy

I did. Magnet's not going to be a runner as they can't provide a voice service on my line. Paying them for BB and someone else line rental and voice is going to be prohibitively expensive.

lucernarian

Ok. I want to clarify that eircom can and do renew IP leases with no particularly annoying consequences for the router's connection. The IP address does change more often than not by looking at my eircom connection's logs.

Secondly, the problem with Vodafone is not so much that it has a 24-hour IP renewal lease. Even though that's what Vodafone themselves claim what the problem is. There are a number of threads about this on Broadband and Talk to Vodafone, and I've raised this issue with Vodafone but they haven't done anything about it.

Here's the good news: Some routers are unaffected by the 24 hour restarts or at least the ones I experimented with on an ex-BT connection. For example, the linksys WRT54G or its DSL equivalent. I used the ordinary WRT54G as a router and set up the BT voyager modem in bridge mode and this led to no drops of the connection over weeks even.

here's the not so good news: Another poster, I can't think of his name, a couple of years ago posted in a thread about this issue and discovered some discrepancies with BT's PPPoE setup which he thought was the cause of the automatic renewal failing. Something called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-069. The TR-069 data that BT's RAS was sending to the router apparently had some incorrect values and this led to the PPPoE connection hanging when the lease expired.

I believe that the WRT54G and possibly the netopia 3347 and 2247 simply aren't TR-069 capable and the incorrect data becomes irrelevant. I haven't had a chance to test the netopia modems that used to be supplied by eircom and are ubiquitous in this country.

I have mentioned this to Vodafone before but the support guys over there keep claiming that it's just a result of a regular IP renewal when this is not the case

n97 mini

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

The TR-069 data that BT's RAS was sending to the router apparently had some incorrect values

I see references to TR069 in the source code for udhcp as used on my modem/router. Not sure if it's enabled but worth a closer look.

Fuzzy Clam

Nemeses wrote: »

Most DSL providers provide a IP for 24hrs or so. I have never come across an eircom BB connection that has had an IP address for more than a day or two the most.

When I was with Eircom, I could keep the same IP address for at at least 1 month. It only changed with a modem reset. This was regular.
I must check if it's the same on this Vodafone connection.