Static IP address?

A fixed IP address is useful if you host your own website or fileserver and also you work remotely and need to access files at home, but aside from that it makes little real difference. I suspect they are more cautious on the business speeds as the price is far higher than the domestic service. I would imagine businesses would be more prone to complain about the performance if it failed to match their expectations whereas domestic customers have to just suck up the "up to" speed claims. The actual speed you get depends to a large extent on how far from the cabinet you are. Speed drops off rapidly beyond 500 metres or so.

I don't use a static address for any of my music-related kit.  I do, however, use the function on my router (Netgear R7000) that allows you to "reserve" an IP address for specific bits of kit.  A reserved address is not a static address.  Technically the address gets assigned by the DHCP protocol, but the same address gets assigned to the same kit every time and I have found that this makes my digital music system more stable (indeed rock-solid) as different bits of kit don't have to keep finding each other. 

ChrisG posted:

Hi

Not sure if this is strictly a streaming topic, so please feel free to move . delete or whatever...here goes...

I currently have a Naim Unitiqute 2 plus 6 Sonos zones and will be adding a Naim streamer to my ageing 82/Hicapx2/250/SBL setup at some point. My current internet provider is Demon, now part of Vodaphone and I currently have their "business" grade service which has a "Static Ip address". This is standard broadband speed up to 19Mbps and I actually get 9-10. So I thought that I'd have a look at BT infinity, which is available here, but it makes no mention of having a static Ip address whereas their "business" Infinity does. Should I be concerned? Strangely the BT business grade Infinity only quotes a speed of 17-33Mbps the home version is up to 52 or 72 on the top package.....so I'm a bit confused.

Any help, ides etc would be much appreciated.

A very Happy New Year to all!

Chris

HNY. No - static or dynamic address a complete irrelevance for your streaming. The address here is the public address you are given on the internet. Most consumers don't set up web services on their public address on the internet so don't need a persistently fixed address so it can be dynamic.

Most consumer public internet addresses use dynamic addresses from a pool that the ISP has registered for use by their  customers.

As far as differences between your business and consumer infinity bandwidths being different is slightly puzzling - they should be the same in my book - and perhaps in practice they are

I think when ISPs say you can get 'up to' a certain speed, they are not making any assessment of your potential line speed. If they offer you up to 10Mb, and your line can support 100Mb, they'll give you 10Mb, or a little less. If they offer you up to 10Mb and your line can only support 4Mb, you will get 4Mb.

Most providers will test your line for you if you give them your phone number and postcode. These figures are more cautious in my experience. My rural broadband connection is consistent at around 4.5Mb, but a BT line test will conservatively estimate that I might get 2Mb.

As Simon says, I don't think you need to worry about IP addresses.

endlessnessism posted:

I don't use a static address for any of my music-related kit.  I do, however, use the function on my router (Netgear R7000) that allows you to "reserve" an IP address for specific bits of kit.  A reserved address is not a static address.  Technically the address gets assigned by the DHCP protocol, but the same address gets assigned to the same kit every time and I have found that this makes my digital music system more stable (indeed rock-solid) as different bits of kit don't have to keep finding each other. 

You're talking about DHCP Reservation, which is on the 'inside' of your network. When the OP talks about a static IP address he's referring to the IP allocated by the ISP. Some provide a very short lease time (and hence do not give a static IP) whereas others give your router an IP that doesn't change, ie. static IP.

BTW, using DHCP reservation within your network is a much preferred solution to assigning non-DHCP IP addresses to your devices, so well done

Thanks to everyone for their much appreciated knowledge and input, I'll ignore the static Ip address for my purposes. Checking with a neighbour it looks like 20Mbps here on Infinity, upload only 1.9 Mbps apparently which is a tad disappointing as mine is 0.85 on broadband

I love this forum!

Best

Chris

20Mbps on Infinity  !!!!   something seriously wrong there,  its either 50 (ish) or 70 (ish)  What service are you paying for & aprx how far (distance) is it to your local FTTC cabinet ?    I have the 72Mbps service & get ~70.   Have you tried restarting your hub ??, button on the top or the web page.  Maybe better to power it off wait a minute or two & restart.   If that doesn't fix the 20Mbps then I would call BT. 

Remember some/most ISPs including BT will  provide an estimated bandwidth based on the distance between your premises and the OpenReach FTTC. Infinity can be provided down 10Mbps - below that it is not usually offered - or at least that was the case. I assume that is what is being provided here - but the bandwidth should be consistent between consumer and business services - as this aspect will be the same - hence why I suggested the actual sync speeds may be same for the two services.

http://www.increasebroadbandsp...eed-against-distance

Interesting chart Simon - thanks.

I am just under 2km from the cabinet but when I switched to BT fibre I was only offered "Faster Broadband" which is their product for more distant customers. It goes up to 20 Mbps and I was promised 11Mbps. I went for this as it was more than double what I was getting before. After installation the speed dropped to around 3Mbps and after several weeks of aggravation I was moved back to copper.

The upside has been a massive discount for the past year and an nice uplift from my previous rate (4.5 to 6.5) due to their efforts to get a decent line to me. Also I kept the HH5 in place of the old HH3.  When you're out in the sticks broadband of any kind is a lottery.

I've signed up for 72 but will in reality get about 22. So I may as well have signed up for 50 as far as download speeds are concerned. Upload speeds will roughly quadruple for me and this is important for my business. And makes the switch to Infinity justified, Having gone from 28, to 40/50ish to 64 ISDN then onto various Broadband  speeds from 1Mb to my (soon to be upgraded) 8Mb, the two biggest boosts to performance were the download speeds possible with ISDN and the upload speeds with Broadband. 64 might not seem like much but when it's always on, stable and reliable it feels very fast. Or at least it did.

Mike-B posted:

20Mbps on Infinity  !!!!   something seriously wrong there,  its either 50 (ish) or 70 (ish)  What service are you paying for & aprx how far (distance) is it to your local FTTC cabinet ?    I have the 72Mbps service & get ~70.   Have you tried restarting your hub ??, button on the top or the web page.  Maybe better to power it off wait a minute or two & restart.   If that doesn't fix the 20Mbps then I would call BT. 

That's about on a par with my connection. What you are failing t take into account is the distance from the user to the fibre cabinet. In my case the nearest cabinet is over kilometre and as verified by Openreach runs through aluminium cable which is notorious for poor connections. There are further details here. http://www.thinkbroadband.com/...fibre-broadband.html

I'm not 'failing' to take into account anything,  I'm well versed on the various reasons for line speed variations.   If you have Infinity-2,  then 20Mbps is well below the BT threshold of  acceptable downlink speed for Inf-2.  The minimum (that BT will take accept) is 40Mbps. 

My point is after power cycling the hub & then re-running the BTW series of speed tests & conforming the speed as seen by BT,  it is worthwhile discussing with BT.   OK maybe not the infamous help desk over the phone,  but worth e-mailing your copy/paste BTW speed test results to the complaints e-mail address.   They may not fix the problem is it is caused simply by distance,  but contract terms are a possible area of discussion.

Mike-B posted:

I'm not 'failing' to take into account anything,  I'm well versed on the various reasons for line speed variations.   If you have Infinity-2,  then 20Mbps is well below the BT threshold of  acceptable downlink speed for Inf-2.  The minimum (that BT will take accept) is 40Mbps. 

My point is after power cycling the hub & then re-running the BTW series of speed tests & conforming the speed as seen by BT,  it is worthwhile discussing with BT.   OK maybe not the infamous help desk over the phone,  but worth e-mailing your copy/paste BTW speed test results to the complaints e-mail address.   They may not fix the problem is it is caused simply by distance,  but contract terms are a possible area of discussion.

We seem to have strayed somewhat from the OP's original point about the necessity for a fixed external IP and as has been explained for streaming music its neither here nor there. However I am unsure who you are directing your reply too. If its the OP then you need to read the post again as they clearly state they currently have ADSL at the moment.

If your suggestion is to me then thanks for your concern, but negotiating with BT about line speed is a waste of time. I have had Openreach out three times to fix issue related to my connection. The reality is if you live more than a kilometre from the cabinet and have aluminium wiring you simply wont achieve anywhere near 40Mbs and if you dont like it BT will tell you to lump it. Unless you live in an area that has Virgin you have little alternative since Talk Talk and Sky use the same link from your home to the cabinet.