Static IP Address Allocation

[JJKebab]

How does vodafone bind static IP addresses to connections?

Up until yesterday I had a static IP address. After some outage and an online chat my connection came back but I discovered that my IP address has changed.

As part of the first-line support, they made me reset my router to factory. I had to reconfigure my LAN IP pools, port-forwarding etc.

When I asked why I lost my static IP the agent insisted it was because I reset my router. But this makes no sense as the static IP is not configured on the router but is maintained by vodafone DHCP/PPPoE or whatever.

[CrimsonLiar]

You are correct that the static IP should be bound to the account and provided by Vodafone's WAN DHCP to the customer's router!

An observation would be that Vodafone's internal networks (such as those running these forums) paper to be very slow today, so it may be that maintenance is currently taking place.  So long as any maintenance fixes more than it breaks we should be good!

[JJKebab]

So I was correct in feeling that I was being fobbed-off when trying to complain about the cause of the loss of my static IP.

What does the DHCP service bind the static IP to? I don't think it's the router's MAC address or serial number because I recently upgraded router and had no problems.

[Ripshod]

I'm not going to pretend I know how vodafone do it but I do understand a few things.

Every line, be it fttc or FTTP has a unique identifier assigned by the carrier (openreach or Cityfibre) which can play a part in authentication. This is invisible to the end user but can be used by an isp as part of their authentication. This is the reason your login won't work on someone else's vodafone router on their connection.

For fttp every ONT has it's own serial number and mac, either or both can be used for authentication. This is why you shouldn't buy an ONT off fleabay.

Then there's our own PPPoE  username/password which can be used for authentication.

These are just a few available methods. I can't tell you which are used by Vodafone. 

[Jayach]

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@Ripshod wrote:

This is the reason your login won't work on someone else's vodafone router on their connection.

I have 3 THG3000's My official one, one they sent me during fault finding and one off eBay.

They all connect fine. Mine gets the correct config for a non-Pro user. The eBay one gets a Pro user config. (presumably it's original owner was on Pro)

The "spare" used to get no config at all, (ie all the options were there including Wi-Fi channel change) but now also gets a Pro config.

[Ripshod]

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@Jayach wrote:

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@Ripshod wrote:

This is the reason your login won't work on someone else's vodafone router on their connection.

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 Just to clarify my point.

[Jayach]

Sorry, obviously still not understanding your point. As far as I know any Vodafone router will work on any Vodafone connection. (I don't believe it was always like that)

[Ripshod]

It may just be the way I've written it.

What I was trying to explain is that your PPPoE login won't work on someone else's connection no matter what router you use.

[Jayach]

Ah, now I get it. Must say I've never tried it. Don't know anyone else on Vodafone so not likely to get the chance.

[CrimsonLiar]

My understanding is that on xDSL at least, each line has a unique service ID.  That service ID can then be used to route authentication requests to the correct ISPs authentication servers where an IP static or not can be assigned based on username and password.

*I'm not aware of how the underlying protocols work and whether a temporary IP is used for routing during authentication, or whether it's managed solely using the MAC address.  Certainly, you can rotate the MAC address and the system will still work correctly every time!