On Mon, Jan 27, 2003 at 07:06:24PM +0100, Thomas Shaddack wrote:

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Pretty hard to do if people are using dialup. Or even dsl, unless they run a linux box they don't ever reboot -- although I've found my dsl ip changing sometimes on it's own, and with no rhyme or reason.

DSL lease timeout. A feature of DHCP-based dynamic IP addresses over permanent connections. Similar for cable, though the differences yo observed seem to be rather implementation-dependent than principial.

No, not really. It's far too irregular for that, sometimes goes for over a month, then sometimes 2-3 times in a week. More like them doing work on the system. Not really dhcp anyway, it's Eoppp. Cable is usally dhcp, and is better because it authenticates on the mac address of the cable modem. And dhcp can be set up to always give the same ip to a certain mac address, but I don't think the eoppp can, or at least they don't -- it always has to negotiate a challange/passwd response which can be quite problematic -- sometimes the only way to get it to work again is to unplug the modem for 30 seconds or so, which, of course, frustrates any script you have to automagically reset dns for your domainname, or even just keep you online.

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Cable is a little more stable, when I had a cable modem it didn't change ip unless I shut off the modem for awhile, and not even always then.

Idea: What about a caller ID system, based on eg. SSL certificates or PGP signed challenge-response?

This would probably work okay, even ssh works despite ip changes, although it stops to ask. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com