[Discuss] IPv4 tunnel providers

[Derek Atkins]

Tom,

Tom Metro <tmetro+blu at gmail.com> writes:

> I'm looking to switch to a different ISP for a home office setup, and
> one of the last details to get figured out is the static IP setup. I
> have a single static IPv4 address with my current provider. The new
> provider seems to want what I think is excessive to rent a single IP.
> Furthermore, I have a class C that I'd like to be able to leverage, and
> I like the idea of tunneling out past the ISP to some cloud termination
> point so I'll have the flexibility to switch ISPs for the last mile
> (either short term during an outage, or long term) without disrupting my
> static IP setup.
>
> Prior research turned up that HE (https://tunnelbroker.net/) offers this
> type of service for free, but IPv6 only, and locally Cambridge Bandwidth
> Consortium (CBC, http://www.cambridge.bandwidth-consortium.us/) does this.

I've been a CBC member since it began, starting as a T1 customer with a
backup v4 tunnel (routing my class C) to using a tunnel full time.  It's
a good group of people, but it's a co-op so don't expect high levels of
"customer service" -- it's all generally volunteer effort.

But once stuff gets configured you rarely need to change it.

NOTE, however, that if you have a dynamic IP address then CBC might not
necessarily be the right solution currently; there is no automated
"repoint my endpoint" process so if you get renumbered you need to
manually adjust the tunnel.

> (The chart here:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IPv6_tunnel_brokers says HE
> supports BGP peering. I wonder if that means I can announce an IPv4 route?)
>
> I'm looking for recommendations for other providers. That could be an
> business ISP that does GRE tunnel termination, or a business-class VPN
> service that will advertise routes to customer supplied IPs. A plan B
> solution would be a cloud VM, though those typically don't support
> customer supplied IPs.
>
>  -Tom

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available