Stephen Gran on 25 May 2007 00:44:28 -0000


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Re: [PLUG] dynamic IP and economics


On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 06:53:32PM -0400, Jeff Abrahamson said:
> For me, I want fixed IP (currently) because
> 
>     - I receive mail

In my experience, that's a show stopper.  Dynamic DNS is pretty good,
but if you're away from home for a few days and your DynDNS client gets
confused, you lose mail.  My parent's firewall/router uses DynDNS so I can
keep track of it, but i have had to also set up a script to send me it's
IP when it changes, since the updates do fail.

>     - I want to be able to ssh into my box
>     - Maybe I want to set up an asterisk server

These are more likely to work, for some value of work.

> [1] I'm finishing my PhD (defense to be scheduled for Fall), but have
>     a CS-ish job starting in September at a finance firm in London.

Welcome to this side of the world!  I'm not all that close (2 hours by
train) but I'm down in London a couple of times a year.  It would be
good to catch up again when you're settled in.

> [2] and to deal with eventual blocked ports, depending on my ISP

The two best ISP's I've found here are Zen and Blackcat.  Zen is much
bigger, and is a little cheaper because of that.  Blackcat is more like
DCANet - small, friendly, and competent.  All 3 of the people who work
there are Debian developers, and they offer a routed RIPE assigned
netblock and native IPv6.  You can assign reverse DNS yourself via a
web interface, and it typically takes effect within half an hour.

> [3] If anyone has any suggestions or advice (pro or con) on virtual
>     debian boxes to be rented, I would appreciate that, too.

With this sort of thing, you get what you pay for.  At work, we rent a
few for ~$13/month, but they're pretty low end.  They often get
overloaded and are painful to work with (it doesn't really matter, as
they're just doing monitoring and scratch setups, so it's not really
interactive).  For decent VoIP, you'll want something a little snappier,
probably.

Cheers,
-- 
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|  Stephen Gran                  | YOU!!  Give me the CUTEST, PINKEST,     |
|  steve@lobefin.net             | most charming little VICTORIAN          |
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|                                | SNAPPY!!                                |
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