They don't care about "capitalist cloud services", they just care about money. If they can charge you a premium for more advanced features (they can) then they will.
this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
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I wonder how often the assigned prefix changes with most of the regular ISPs. I'd have to look someone else's router since I'm still stuck on an old contract. But I believe what I saw with some of the regular consumer contracts: the prefixes stay the same for a long time. You could just slap a free DynDNS service on top and be done with it.
But yes, I think this used to be the promise... We'd all get IPv6 and a lot of gadgets like NAS systems, video cameras and a wifi kettle and they'd be accessible from outside. Instead of that we use big capitalist cloud services and all the data from the internet of things devices has some stopover in the China cloud.
My ISP seems to use just normal DHCP for assigning addresses and honors re-use requests. The only times my IP addresses have changed has been I've changed the MAC or UUID that connects. I've been off-line for a week, come back, and been given the same address. Both IPv4 and v6.
If one really wants their home systems to be publicly accessible, it's easy enough to get a cheap vanity domain and point it at whatever address. rDNS won't work, which would probably interfere with email, but most services don't really need it. It's a bit more complicated to detect when your IP changes and script a DNS update, but certainly do-able, if (like OP) one is hell bent on avoiding any off-site hardware.
My dynamic IPv6 prefix hasn't changed in a couple of years. It only changed because I reset the router config and that changed my DUID. That's good enough for everything I host. I don't even bother with dynamic DNS anymore.
I wouldn't bother with trying to host an email server from a residential connection though. Even if you can get your ISP to open port 25 for you, many email servers won't accept mail from residential IP addresses.
Use hostnames and dynamic prefixes or addresses don't really matter. Haven't had an issue in years and my last isp changed prefixes multiple times a week. I mean technically it would not be available for five minutes when IP changes but never noticed.
It's just one more bullshit thing to set up, but yeah I might be doing it soon.
If you have control over at least the root of your network you can totally get away with hosting in a dynamic pub ip. You just need to set up dynamicdns. There are other ways of handling this specific issue too. You can always go to a colocation and set up a server there if you want. You could also create your own reverse proxy tunnel in a place that is public then forward it. There are lots of work arounds really. Yeah, it sucks that American ISPs generally don’t support ipv6 but there are totally ways to work around it all.
What really gets me up in arms is when they advertise gigabit connections or 500mb speeds only to limit upload to 20mb/s. That is where they are actively inhibiting self hosting communities.
Even in an ideal DNS setup, you're probably going to have downtimes whenever your dynamic IP changes. If only because some ISPs even force-disconnect you after a while to change your address.
I mean I’ll be real. Sure in some circumstances that could be an annoyance for 15 seconds for some software that might rely on a session whenever your ip changes like once a month if that. A rotating ip is probably one of the easiest things to work around amongst the plethora of challenges that ISPs present for those who want to self host.
I mean just take a look at what is involved if you are in a situation where cg-nat is implemented. You legitimately have no control over the root of your network at that point. I have that issue in particular with what is essentially a mobile hotspot as my failover for when my fiber fails. That being said I had to architect it in a way that took that took cg-nat into consideration. If I hadn’t then when fiber fails it would take down my services as a whole anyway.
My point is that those challenges have workarounds, you can solve those issues relatively easily and they even present a level of security. Where it is actively malicious is with restrictions to capacity such as upload limits in which they to a degree lie about their speeds and capacity. The terms of service stuff is just flat out awful too.
Some ISPs require changes ever 24 hours and will disconnect you if needed. Also, if you set DNS to cache such a short amount of time that you can react to that in 5 minutes, you will incur way more DNS traffic which can become a problem when your site is busier. Also, even if your DNS TTL is set to a super short value, a web search suggests to me in practice there will likely be downstream clients and networks that ignore it and won't really update in such a short time frame.
What ISP are you referring to? I have genuinely never heard of an isp that takes 24 hours to rotate your IP. Also utilizing dynamicdns is not going to incur more dns traffic? Dynamic DNS updates your dns provider from a system on your local network that your pub ip has changed then your provider will start sending traffic to the new ip. Propagation used to take a while but I haven’t experienced propagation wait times of over 10 minutes in years. This all being said dynamic DNS isn’t exactly the most elegant solution. It is just one of the simplest that I mentioned. There are significantly better options overall that completely take the requirement of a static pubip completely out of the equation and can be built using all free open source tools relatively easily.
It causes way more traffic for the DNS server to use a shorter TTL, so yes, it does incur more DNS traffic. In Germany some providers will disconnect you regularly if you stay connected for too long.
IPv6 costs money to implement so it doesn't happen without good reason.
For ISPs you need many options so that one company can't take all the business. In my area competition is steep so fiber is cheap. In rural areas I'm personally interested in community or small ISPs. Surely some people could get together and make something better.
rural ISPs still need a connection to the greater internet, what options are there when the closest non-shitty option is hundreds of miles away?
Community run ISPs
Get some people together and start an ISP
Starlink gives me an ipv6 its not static as such but a dynamic DNS can solve that issue. My ISP issue is that my mobile provider doesn't give me an ipv6 at all so I can't route to my home server without a gateway to proxy.
Starlink is worse that many other options. I would avoid it if you can.
Except I'm in rural Australia. Star link is objectively the best option.
It sucks that rural Australia’s part of the NBN got kneecapped down to Skymuster. I’ve played with Starlink quite a while ago and unless it’s really heavy rain it works really well up to the point of being able to stream games on GeForce NOW. Obviously a fast wired connection is preferable but as you say Starlink really is the only good option for a lot of people.