OT ISP upstream

[dennis]

It probably is fixed but its assigned dynamically.

[dennis]

They will always be unique but you won't be taking them with you, they are not yours. In fact they are not the ISPs either.

[jrwalliker]

That may be the case for some service providers, in the same way that Virgin cable connections for example have "sticky" IPv4 addresses that hardly ever change but do very occasionally.

However, none of the service providers (in three different countries) that I use for IPv6 do this. The allocation in every case is documented and guaranteed to be static.

John

[dennis]

Does your router actually let you set the link local address?

[Roger Hayter]

Thanks. I may well pursue that.

We are talking about Openreach FTTP (under a community partnership arrangement, as you say), It is actually very hard to know what TalkTalk will do as there seem to be no customer-facing people who know anything at all apart from what is on their screens. And since FTTP is not currently available to me it isn't on their screen. But I get the impression they are not interested in any new customers or new connections on exchanges they don't have LLU at, and I am on a Market A exchange. I was certainly told by a sales person that they do not resell Openreach FTTP, but I have no great confidence that they actually knew that, as opposed to knowing they couldn't sell it to me.

And having no customer facing people who understand my legacy connection is a problem. Apart from the impossibility of changing rDNS (to be fair, they have maintained the existing file so far) my connection broke last year and they insisted I was on a dynamic IP connection and offered to sell me a single fixed IP. This was after five separate contacts with online and telephone support, three of them closed as already fixed. I had to send a letter before action to their head office to get things reinstated six weeks later.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I would defintely contact RIPE to see if your bblock can be transferred to another ISP

[Andy Burns]

I thought the whole *point* of PA space is that it is not transferable?

[Terry Casey]

I doubt that the way VM works has changed much since I retired

12 years ago. Because the broadband connections use the CATV feed, the network is segmented so that each router interface only see enough of the network to ensure that all users get a good speed. As most folk leave their router on 24/7, there is no reason for the IP address to change. If the customer does disconnect their router, they will be allocated the next free address - which may well be the one they had before.

As the customer base increases, the network loading is monitored and resegmented as required to maintain service levels. When the service is resumed, IP addresses will be allocated on a first come, first served basis and then everything settles down as before.

If, in the process, your part of the network is switched to a different router, the new IP address wil lbe from an entirely different range to the one you had before.

[The Natural Philosopher]

That is precisely why I suggested asking ripe to confirm if that was indeed the case

[Roger Hayter]

I think they would only consider that for a block at least 2^8 bigger!

[Andy Burns]

He looked it up on the ripe database and it said it was PA, surely asking them by a different route will get the same answer ...

[Vir Campestris]

There aren't many ISPs that will resell FTTP. Start there.

And _write_ to TalkTalk to cancel. Don't phone them or email, do it in writing.

Andy