[ale] State of play re home Internet with static IP

Mon Mar 4 22:05:15 EST 2019

a couple dumb questions:

why do y'all host email at home other than for learning / lab purposes?

why do y'all need static IPs aside from email server purposes when dynamic
dns works so well nowadays with cloudflare for instance?

most next gen firewalls can take DNS in place of IPs for ACLs and rarely
does any commercial internet facing service have just one IP address in any
case (anycast, load balancing, etc)

On Mon, Mar 4, 2019 at 9:58 PM Jeremy T. Bouse via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:

> I just dumped my Comcast Business Internet and Comcast Residential Cable
> service at the first of the year. At that time Comcast was raising the rate
> on the monthly router lease which I only begrudgingly got because they said
> that was the only way I could get a /29 static subnet so I was paying for
> the 50/10 internet service, the modem and the static IP block. I went with
> AT&T GigaPower fiber. I'm getting 995/956 as of my last speed test
> yesterday.  So to address Joey's comment about it not being fiber to the
> side of the house, I can claim with 100% certainty that I have fiber all
> the way into my second story room where my router sits as I watched the
> tech run the fiber up to the box and plug it all up. Then again the ADSL
> service I had years ago before going with Comcast was delivered over fiber
> to the beige box in my neighbors yard across the street where it went from
> the ONC to copper to the side of my house, but in the past couple years AT&
> brought the fiber the last 25-50yards give or take to the side of the
> house.
>
> So far in the 2 full months I've had the service I've had no outages and
> I'm pushing TBs up and down through it. The only port blocking I've
> encountered is their old grandfather's firewalling of 25/tcp outbound but
> nothing stopping ports inbound so far that I've found. I have the same /29
> subnet worth of static IP addresses at $10 less per month than Comcast and
> AT&T doesn't charge a monthly fee for the router and the installation fee
> was waived for me. I'm currently paying half what I paid for Comcast and
> have over 20x the bandwidth.  I was paying $150 to Comcast for the Business
> internet and they were raising that so I went with AT&T for $75 a month.
> On 3/4/2019 7:24 PM, Jeff Hubbs via Ale wrote:
>
> After many years at the status quo (AT&T UVerse and POTS land line) I'm
> finally looking into a rework of the home telecomm situation.
>
> I have two main drivers that are forcing the decision:
>
>    1. Even after the shortest of power outages, upstream UVerse service
>    goes dead and stays dead for 10-20 minutes. This was not always the case
>    but in the last few years it's been the "new normal;" my wife works at home
>    via VPN enough that that's a problem, and it's no good for me either. Yes,
>    I have UPSses out the wazoo on everything and it doesn't matter. I've tried
>    to get through to AT&T by phone to at least get the problem acknowledged
>    but that's been impossible.
>    2. There's a good chance I might be leaving town for my next job for
>    an unknown amount of time, but that won't mean that I'll stop being the "IT
>    guy" for the house; I will simply *have* to be able to shell in from the
>    outside. If there is such a thing as a "reflector" service that sits on the
>    Internet - even if it's my own server somewhere - that gives me a way to
>    tunnel in reverse through some kind of connection that's initiated from
>    inside the house, I don't want to be dependent on it.
>
> Being able to run my own Internet-reachable web and email servers in the
> house is anticipated but is secondary to those two main drivers.
>
> It is my understanding that only AT&T and Comcast serve my street.
>
> I've spoken to a rep for Comcast Business and they're telling me that
> within reason (with respect to affected region(s) and length of outage, I
> presume) their service will remain unaffected by power outage. That handles
> 1. above, and they also offer as few as one static IP address which should
> be sufficient to handle 2.
>
> I have not yet called about any of AT&T's business residential offerings
> but when I got a flyer in the mail about some kind of fiber service being
> available in my neighborhood and called to inquire, I couldn't get anything
> even remotely like a straight answer but the upshot was that no, the fiber
> service wasn't available to me. I'm quite rather done with AT&T, to be
> honest.
>
> Comcast says they can give me a VoIP-like service that can optionally use
> my old phone number. I'm undecided on that; the phone rings with random
> robocalls and other solicitations 3-5 times a day (Do Not Call list
> notwithstanding) and there are only 3 living persons whom we know who ever,
> *ever* call that line.
>
> We would like to have a TV service with DVR available and it's my
> understanding from talking to Comcast that it would have to be Xfinity
> piggybacked on the Comcast Business service. It would be either that or
> satellite to still have DVR. I've never dealt with satellite service before
> but the houses to either side of us have it. I've built an HDTV antenna and
> mounted it in the attic but I haven't completed the cabling to know for
> sure how well it will work, and if we went that route, there'd be no DVR
> unless I went the whole MythTV (or equivalent) route and I'm really not
> willing to try that again.
>
> I'm all (rabbit) ears, so let your replies rip.
>
> - Jeff
>
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-- 
Sent from my mobile. Please excuse the brevity, spelling, and punctuation.
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