75ZT Community

So I'm finally fed up paying over the odds for BT, supposedly for better service, and now they have removed another of the benefits, I'm going.

I want to have a fixed IP address to make running my own server easier. Yes I know about dynamic DNS services but it still causes issues with sending mail. That means I have limited choices unless I want to pay for a business broadband account, and I don't.

PlusNet will do this for a reasonable price, and a one off fee for setting it up, but seem to get a lot of criticism for 'managing' data connections when they are busy, because their capacity is lower than it ought to be. Also they are rather insistent you take your line rental from them too. John Lewis internet appear to be the same bunch.

Freeola seems a good price, but I can't seem to find much about them. They do seem to concentrate on internet stuff rather than trying to sell you TV and home phone too. That's good in my book.

BE has just been bought by sky. I don't fancy that because they 'promise sky are aware that our customers value fixed IP addresses' but will just switch it off anyway I'm sure, or suddenly charge a premium price.

Any experience, comments, other suggestions?

I was with plusnet (which is actually owned by BT!) for ages (about 15 years to be honest) but had a problem with my connection speed slowing down after changing to a faster network (21CN) and they wouldn't switch me back, so I swapped to Sky, but they don't offer a fixed IP (as far as I can see). Having said that, I only pay £7.50 to sky for the broadband (but do have the line & TV with them!) so not all bad.

Static IPs are getting hard to come by of personal lines. Well it appears that way for fibre. I know you've mentioned DDNS but have you tried the Synology one? (I assume you're still with Synology) I've never had any issues with mail and have the system emailing me updates throughout the day to my phone. I've linked the ddns name to a subdomian as well so it's easier to remember and looks better. That's through BT infinity.

I have two static IPs at the offices from sky originally BE with no issues at the moment but I'm lucky to be out of contract so any price issues and I'll swap them.

Thanks David. I hadn't seen the Synology DDNS, I'm using a different one, and I get lots of email rejected as the IP address is known as a dynamic one. I'll look into how synology get around this and maybe it's another option. I'm not after fibre, can't get it here yet anyway!

Shame you can't get fibre as I work for Virgin. ooooops probably should not have said that

persuer wrote:Shame you can't get fibre as I work for Virgin. ooooops probably should not have said that

Really? What do you do?

Well the reason for using a fixed IP address may be invalid anyway. It's all about being able to use my own email server to send email. With a dynamic IP address, many email servers reject it as potential spam when sent from an address within the dynamic pool, so a fixed address is supposed to fix this. However it seems several of the services that fix your address, fix it within the range for dynamic addresses, and therefore the problem remains.

The good news is, since I last looked at this a number of services have started up alongside the dynamic DNS redirection services (DynDNS, NoIP for example) and you use a mail relay service, so it effectively gets sent from a clean email address. Some have a small fee, but I'm trialling a service called mandrill, which appears to be working OK. My emails get delivered with a 'sent on behalf of' in the from line, but I can live with that. I may even be able to switch this off.

So apart from not being in a LLU area, I now have a wider choice. Persuer, I'm sorry I wouldn't have Virgin, as they severely upset me when they were branded NTL, and still insist on sending me regular junk mail, in spite of me being registered with MPS. They use a legal loophole, and I can't abide companies who do this, knowing full well what they are up to.

I work in sales Paul.

persuer wrote:I work in sales Paul.

OK - thanks