ISP won't set up static IP - Services keep going down
I called my ISP today to set up a static IP because my services keep being taken down from my IP changing. I either need a business plan or a 5-10gbps residential plan to do that...
I cannot get on the business plan without a valid Business ID so that's not an option. And no way in hell I'm paying for those speeds.
Anyone have any alternatives to stop this from happening so often? My public IP seems to change regularly every 2-3 weeks and it's getting pretty frustrating having to reconfigure things. I only have 2 ISPs in my area and they are both terrible. I assume I'm out of luck, but maybe there's some tech magic I'm unaware of.
60 replies
Glad I have the option of a local enthusiast-run ISP. They've been operating for 30+ years and had zero problems getting me a static IP for a whopping $5/mo on top of the standard price. I can even get a real-life engineer on the phone within an hour.
https://www.howtogeek.com/866573/what-is-dynamic-dns-ddns-and-how-do-you-set-it-up/
I use ddclient with cloudflare as my domains nameserver.
Never had a static ip, but I've never had an issue with it changing because I've always used this.
Ok great, this sounds exactly like what I'm looking for. Have seen the term DDNS used before but didn't know it was for this. Thanks!
If your domain registrar doesn't do DDNS, and you don't want to pay extra for one that does, you can get free DNS for life at Hurricane Electric:
https://dns.he.net/
All you need to do is finish their little online IPv6 course. TBH the "course" is just setting up your own server properly and proving it.
The simple way is using some bullshit free domain of the ddns provider, and cname to that from your domain
It's one of the features I love about Njalla for domains the most.
You don't even need a ddns service because they support updating through simple https calls.
So I have a super tiny script that basically checks the WAN IP through ipify, then checks that against the routers current WAN IP, and if they match it does nothing and ends, but if its different, it sends out a curl with the new IP. I have it running every few minutes in a cronjob. It's actually technically my service with the most uptime according to healthchecks.io.
Have had this setup running for at least 5 years, works flawlessly, and running it in a docker container meant all I had to when moving to a new homeserver was copy the config file
I think the default solution for this is to use a dynamic dns. There are services for that or you can get yourself a domain and configure that as dnydns in your router. That is what I am doing atleast
DDNS is the way. Or was, until Tailscale.
Still kinda is. Some devices might not be able to connect to your tailnet. You might be trying to reach your devices from a device that isn't on your VPN. The funnel might work, if you can work within its limitations.
https://www.duckdns.org/
Duck it!
Depending a bit on OPs needs, this is the quickest & easiest fix I know of.
I really love the vibe of freedns.afraid.org
They also give you 6 months in between needing to log in to your account
Either use a dynamic DNS service, as many others have mentioned and probably easiest, or, assuming you only want yourself to have access to the services, another option is to use something like Tailscale or a WireGuard/FRP instance in a static VPS as the rendezvous point.
I was flat out rejected by my ISP to have a static IP, though I only had it changed once since I started hosting services, so ahatever.
I use tailscale instead of caring about my public IP or dynamic DNS
100% recommend tailscale. I have it set up so that IPs from three different data centers for work and my home are all routed properly, so I never have to do anything special to connect to anything. It’s like super simple and amazing.
Bruh mate.
Mine changes daily so stop complaining that hard xD
Honest suggestion: Just set up a dyndns with any dns provider that supports automations.
Proxy through a VPS, or use dynamic DNS if you don't mind occasionally waiting for TTL expiration when your address suddenly changes. You can set it to 1 minute and that often works these days (it didn't always).
Will your ISP give you a static IPv6 block? It's v4 that's scarce, but if it's just for your own stuff and you aren't worried about users on old v4-only networks, it's fine to just use pure v6.
If you want a super cheap VPS with static ipv6 and NAT v4, try tierhive.com.
I pay $5/mo for a VPS and host Nginx Proxy Manager on it
Wouldn't your bandwidth then be restricted to the bandwidth of VPS? How much bandwidth does a 5$ VPS give?
Vultr allows up to 1TB/mo of bandwidth for $5/mo. Plenty for what I use it for
I solved it with a cheap VPS running Caddy as a reverse proxy and a Tailscale connection back to my home server.
I think Tailscale has a service called Tailscale Serve which may work around a frequently changing ip as well. Not sure though as I haven't looked into it much.
Why not run just the VPN on the VPS instead of opening everything directly?
Not sure I understand. The VPN (Tailscale) is on the VPS.
I have several very technically challenged family members that wanted to use a couple of the services that I host. Doing it this way simplifies the setup and the tech support calls. The VPS, or rather a domain name that leads to the VPS, is how they access those services.
I have Tailscale setup on all my personal devices, so I generally just connect directly to the services.
Dynamic dns is what you need. Only takes a few minutes to set up
I run pfsense with dyndns and a short TTL. It updates my DNS provider instantly when the gateway IP changes. For mail I got a cheap vps running pfsense again, tunneling back home via Wireguard and haproxy to link up connections. It is very stable and not as hard to set up as it sounds (and cheap).
I use duckdns.org and then make use of CNAME records pointed at the duckdns record for my own domain name/subdomains.
My router (unifi device) keeps duck DNS up to date with my changing IP, but there's lots of ways to get that done.
You could consider tailnet or similar as well?
Dynamic dns. Use it.
I use afraid.org.
Another option would be to just use tailscale.
But if you want unlimited tailscale you will have to host that too and also dynamic dns. Important note, idk what firewall you have, I have a UDM Pro, so that updates my dynamic dns automatically, yours may have something similar.
Do you need to publicly expose your services?
I personally use a VPS with Wireguard
This is the way
That is a bit crazy if you are in the US. There is no ‘business Id’ just say you are a sole proprietorship, meaning the business is just you, no corporation structure or anything like that and you are dba, doing business as, and your name.
That is how you technically describe yourself when you are a business when you are a person.
Your tax id number would just be your social security number.
It’s legal to transact business as a person.
Well that's some good info to have in general. Think I'm okay with using DDNS but this is good to know.
Yeah, it’s easier to start a business than people think.
Most ISPs charge insane fees for static IPs (like 4-5x the monthly rate of dynamic IP accounts), so while this is an option, it’s a relatively expensive one.
The joy of living in the US I guess. My ISP in Australia charges $5 a month for a static IPV4 address.
The joy of having a crown corp in a province of Canada providing real competition gives me 2 free static IPs.
Nice! Although I do wish everyone would get with IPV6 at some stage. But it seems everyone is OK with the current coping mechanisms in IPV4, so maybe I should pin my hopes on IPV7 or 8.
Same with mine though I don't bother because my dynamic IP hasn't changed in 6 years anyway
It's not worth it unless you're trying to run something like an email server or a name server. Most things work just fine with dynamic DNS. A few minutes of downtime on a personal site when the IP address changes is not a big deal.
Not in the US, at work we pay 6 times the rate I pay at home for 1/6 the speed I get at home, everyone hates our office internet speed 😂, at least it's static do we can host stuff
If you have a domain on cloudflare you can make it point to your public ip using something like this https://github.com/timothymiller/cloudflare-ddns
Also some routers, like tp-link, have a ddns feature where they provide you a domain that points to your public ip
This is what I use. Been flawless for 2 years.
I use a terraform script that pushes my IP up to route 53 every hour. been good enough for me for the last six years.
Recurring unconditional pushes, awesome :)
here's the neat thing. terraform won't push anything if nothing has changed.
so no. no recurring unconditional pushes.
Didn't catch that in the other post, nice :)
I have a VPS running nginx and wireguard. I just forward whatever subdomains to my home server over wireguard.
Since nobody mentioned, I recommend https://desec.io/ as the DNS provider. Has a good REST API to update records, also provides a
dedyn.iodynamic domain, and runs as a nonprofit. I thinkddclientwill also support it natively in the next release as well.The solution of renting a VPS also works but usually incurs some cost. You might also want to look into Cloudflare Tunnels
Man. At least one isp in my area gives you the business plan if you just ask for it. I mean you need to give a business name but you can make it anything you like.
Right, sole proprietorships are generally seen as valid businesses.
TheKaul dba TheKaul Consulting Services and a business id of your SSN will usually do the trick
OP, with that said - My IP almost never changes, but, pfSense has the ability to update DNS records when it changes, depending on the DNS Host. No reason a script wouldn't be able to do the same thing when it sees your IP change, assuming the things you have to change basically come down to setting a couple of records to match your home IP anyways.
Duckdns.org and then set up a cron to update it regularly
If you're able to do away with ISP routers with ISP restrictions I highly recommend doing so - hint OpenWRT. Otherwise, Duckdns with cron is your friend:
https://invidious.tiekoetter.com/watch?v=z092FGtP6ME
Or
https://youtu.be/z092FGtP6ME
Prior to me having my static IP I used duckDNS and a cron script on a pi. My ISP offers two free static IPs so I got those now. Sorry to hear you don’t even have one.
Last time I had to do something like that I used no-ip running on my raspberry pi that's already running pihole
It's been very long since I've had to mess with this, I don't even know which machine it runs on. But somewhere, I have a Cron job that runs a curl to namecheap with a magic string. That magic string confirms I am the owner of that domain and namecheap will automatically update the IP address for that URL to whatever IP address my curl came from.
afraid.org for dns and they have a dead simple way to keep it up to date. I have it running at work in a crontab that sends the current IP every thirty minutes. The site looks old because it is but it functions great.
Ddns as others said or use cloudflare dns with cloudflare tunnel
Thats crazy that you now need to prove you have a business to get that service? Don't worry, it cost way more anyway and offers very little extra to be worth it at least in the US. I used to use duckdns years ago, and now I just said screw it and purchased a domain name from namecheap for a few bucks for the year and a few more bucks for the ssl cert then use the ddns service through them and link it to a pc on my network using the small app they provide to keep the IP updated. I use the name for all my services. Sometimes the name will cost way more when renewing in which case ill just pick another one because screw them. Ive used a .co and now using a .space.
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If you don't go with tailscale or dyndns/duckdns and decide to just pay for the upgraded service from the ISP, I recommend going with the 5-10gbps option. When I checked a few years ago the base level business plans were the same price as the 5-10gbps plans but you only got 250mbps. (Comcast & att)