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On Fri, 5 Jul 2013, Simon Avery wrote:
Unless you specifically need static ip addresses (ipv4, and I kinda likethem, but I'm not a typical user)It's nothing to do with static IP addresses. Today, if an ISP has 10,000 customers then it needs 10,000 IP addresses. It's potentially worse for an ISP that forces you to change your IP address every time you connect too as they need to keep a small pool of unused ones to cycle round. The days of an ISP having 1000+ customers and 64 modem lines and 64 IP addresses are long gone. (I used to manage one, never again!) Everyone has internet on all the time now. The whole dynamic vs. static IP address is just another thing that the ISPs think they can charge you more for when you "upgrade" to a static IP address. The reality is that ISPs managing dynamic/changing IP addresses actually have more equipment and a more complex setup than ISPs handing out static IP addresses.That's an interesting point, especially about most users being always-on now. However, two points there: 1. I've never been charged extra for a static ip. I've chosen ISPs that support it (including the budget llu bethere, now swallowed by sky but still static), but those that don't, don't and won't. Maybe somebody does it as a cost extra, but not seen that.
BT do. You can pay to migrate to a business connection with static IP address.
Others provide this feature too, some simply don't.
2. Those who ask for statics tend to have reason to. This equates to additional software/support when they ask for things like rdns allocating and higher outgoing bandwidth (running servers on adsl etc). (Although in mitigation, they tend not to waste the isp's time with problems that are solved by turning it off and on again) That most isp's use dynamic is simply that they can manage them easier and cheaper. Running low? Throw another /16 into the dhcp pool. Out of ten thousand users, you can bet that even today several hundred will be offline, perhaps because the old man doesn't like leaving anything electrical turned on overnight, or they're on holiday, and that allows reuse.
People were told early on to leave their routers/modems ON. This was due to the line "training" required. I don't know anyone who turns their modem/router off... When I had several dozen ADSL csutomers (via Entanet) it was a big event when one went offline... Usually a power cut...
Those were interesting times though. I remember Zynet having a physical PoP in Plymouth and, was it Truro? To allow customers in those cities the ability to pay local call rates...
A few ISPs did this - and ran 64Kbps lines back to HQ. Stick a Livingston portmonster on it and 30 (not)modems sharing that 64K line... 0345 (now 0845) quickly provided a solution to that as all lines led to London (or Manchester) so the notion of a local dial-up POP was somewhat redundant. Finally FRIACO before ADSL roll-out became UK wide. I had a "Home Highway" aka ISDN line at home calling a single Demon FRAICO number to give me effectively a 64Kbps leased line - before I got higher speed Internet in this 3rd world county I'd moved to... (Came from Bristol where I had 512Kbps cable, woo hoo..)
I was in Bristol at the time (mid 90's) and as part of the setup had a small bank of 4 (I think) real modems going into a multi-port serial card into a FreeBSD box... These lines were connected to telewest - and at the time TW (like all the cable co's) offered free local calls... They quickly cottonned onto it though, but those modems ran 24/7 for a good while...
Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq