Sponsored Links

WAN IP Address Issue

Skoobaskunk

Member
I'll start off by saying that I class myself as an intermediate user when it comes to all things networking, so I'll readily admit that I have gaps in my knowledge when it comes to detailed networking.

I've been with Community Fibre for 2 years and have been using their service with a Draytek 2927 router, which is connected via my WAN port directly to the Adtran Modem that Community Fibre supplied. On the whole not too many issues in that time apart from the occasional drop in service, or re-boot of their modem until this week.

During the initial contractual period I had been on their 500 Mbs Service, which was coming up for renewal on 21st October so I decided to contact them pre-contractual expiry to upgrade to their cheaper 1Gps, but have been experiencing issues ever since with using file sharing application and accessing my Plex Server remotely, which are now seemingly being blocked despite having port forwarding set-up on the router.

My router is set-up to obtain the WAN/Public IP address automatically and my router shows this as 100.67.xx.xx, however when I go to https://whatismyipaddress.com/ it shows my public IP as 45.xxx.xxx.xx which corresponds with the IP address that shown on my Plex server. I've attempted to release and renew this IP address, but it doesn't change and have also attempted to set a static IP that mirrors the details of the 45.xxx.xxx.xx address, but my connection drops at that point. I've reached out to Community Fibre (no response, will be calling them later today) and Draytek support who seem to be stumped.

Based on some quick research is it possible that the transition to the new service has now put me onto a package that is being delivered across CG-NAT? Starting to regret upgrading now just to save myself £3 a month :-(

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
 
Yes, unfortunately this £3 change has placed you on CGNAT and caused the issues you’ve described including the increased outages. You could try complaining if the customer service advisor didn’t explain there would be changes such as losing your public IP and hope they can revert the upgrade or add a public IP. It’s not your fault if they never explained the unintended consequences of moving to the 1Gbps service and the lower reliability of their CGNAT solution.

The only other option that comes to mind is to use services like Tailscale / Zerotier to create a virtual network.
 
Yes, unfortunately this £3 change has placed you on CGNAT and caused the issues you’ve described including the increased outages. You could try complaining if the customer service advisor didn’t explain there would be changes such as losing your public IP and hope they can revert the upgrade or add a public IP. It’s not your fault if they never explained the unintended consequences of moving to the 1Gbps service and the lower reliability of their CGNAT solution.

The only other option that comes to mind is to use services like Tailscale / Zerotier to create a virtual network.
Thanks Stackdell, I was hoping that this wasn't going to be the case...bugger!

The interesting thing is that my contract wasn't due to renew until later this month, so they've changed something on their back end without actually upgrading the speed.

They will be my first call at 9am this morning.
 
Sponsored Links
the best thing is Tailscale. I used and setup many different option from scratch.
 
I don’t have CGNAT on my 1gig package as I had ordered my service back in March this year but i use ZeroTier to tunnel into my network and I can say it’s amazing. It’s incredibly fast and very reliable.
 
Last edited:
Sponsored Links
Let us know how it goes, there should be a cooling off period with any contract renewals.

Good Luck.
Thank you for all of the recommendations guys, much appreciated.

After a little faffing with Tier 1 trying to get them to log the ticket correctly and share the case reference number with me so that I could provide detailed feedback with them one of their engineers called me to tell me that he'd spoken to his manager and they just decided to roll me back to the original service.

All tested on the call (quickly checked that I could access my Plex Server) and all services seemed to be accessible. Then logged onto the router and I could see the new IP address had been captured by the router. So no static IP address, but I'll take the sticky addressed that I had previously.

Hopefully other users come across this thread before they potentially upgrade and get moved (without their knowledge) to CGNAT.
 
Thank you for all of the recommendations guys, much appreciated.

After a little faffing with Tier 1 trying to get them to log the ticket correctly and share the case reference number with me so that I could provide detailed feedback with them one of their engineers called me to tell me that he'd spoken to his manager and they just decided to roll me back to the original service.

All tested on the call (quickly checked that I could access my Plex Server) and all services seemed to be accessible. Then logged onto the router and I could see the new IP address had been captured by the router. So no static IP address, but I'll take the sticky addressed that I had previously.

Hopefully other users come across this thread before they potentially upgrade and get moved (without their knowledge) to CGNAT.
I think you should consider yourself lucky with the outcome. I wonder what is going to happen to people that finish their contract but don't do any changes to it, will they be stripped of their public IPv4 too at the end of the contract? Or the fact that no change has happened means they will remain on the same plan for ever?
 
@Skoobaskunk glad it all worked out well for you. If you already on the 500Mbps service the upgrade to 1Gbps only increases wifi-6 speeds to around 750Mbps.

I would still look at Tailscale / Zerotier as I switched off public port mapping in favour of this more secure remote access solution.
 
Tailscale/ZeroTier would only work for Plex if the clients/end users were able to use TS/ZT which isn't always possible or would be a massive faff to set up (as an example a user that watches Plex on their TV OS would need gateway routing to your tailnet/Plex server). I share Plex with my parents, brothers and a couple of friends so went with paying £8/month extra for a public IP (Toob). I agree that access to most other applications where you require port forwarding can be achieved using TS/ZT though (I personally use TS).
 
Last edited:
Sponsored Links
Tailscale/ZeroTier would only work for Plex if the clients/end users were able to use TS/ZT which isn't always possible or would be a massive faff to set up (as an example a user that watches Plex on their TV OS would need gateway routing to your tailnet/Plex server). I share Plex with my parents, brothers and a couple of friends so went with paying £8/month extra for a public IP (Toob). I agree that access to most other applications where you require port forwarding can be achieved using TS/ZT though (I personally use TS).
The Plex use case can also be solved with a virtual server which connects back to your TS/ZT. This will be more secure option as no open ports to the internet. Microsoft claims the hack that got access to multiple Exchange servers from the US government was started via a Plex server that was hacked on one of their engineers houses.
 
The Plex use case can also be solved with a virtual server which connects back to your TS/ZT. This will be more secure option as no open ports to the internet. Microsoft claims the hack that got access to multiple Exchange servers from the US government was started via a Plex server that was hacked on one of their engineers houses.
Are you talking about a VPS? This is true but 1. Its an additional cost and 2. Its an extra hop for traffic coming in to your server.

I had considered this but didn't like the idea (for efficiency reasons) of another server being in between the end client and my machine. Admittedly my IP costs me per month but it's a "cleaner" solution than bouncing traffic somewhere else to end up back at my server.

Re. The plex open port comment this is probably fair - fortunately I don't rely on a Plex port to be opened but instead use nginx proxy on my server for Plex so all client traffic has no choice but to be encrypted. It annoyed me that Plex gives users the option of connecting with or without encryption and so the proxy solves this issue.
 
You can reverse proxy Plex through Cloudflare tunnels, it's against TOS but if you're only pushing a couple GB a day to friends and family then it's not going to register as anything for Cloudflare to care about
 
Tailscale/ZeroTier would only work for Plex if the clients/end users were able to use TS/ZT which isn't always possible or would be a massive faff to set up (as an example a user that watches Plex on their TV OS would need gateway routing to your tailnet/Plex server). I share Plex with my parents, brothers and a couple of friends so went with paying £8/month extra for a public IP (Toob). I agree that access to most other applications where you require port forwarding can be achieved using TS/ZT though (I personally use TS).
tvOS got TS I believe!
 
@Skoobaskunk glad it all worked out well for you. If you already on the 500Mbps service the upgrade to 1Gbps only increases wifi-6 speeds to around 750Mbps.

I would still look at Tailscale / Zerotier as I switched off public port mapping in favour of this more secure remote access solution.
Any good guides for a Windows user please?
 
Sponsored Links
You can reverse proxy Plex through Cloudflare tunnels, it's against TOS but if you're only pushing a couple GB a day to friends and family then it's not going to register as anything for Cloudflare to care about
Thanks for that link. Do I need a special domain name for this process (their example.com) or can you use a free dynamic DNS service?
 
I don’t have CGNAT on my 1gig package as I had ordered my service back in March this year but i use ZeroTier to tunnel into my network and I can say it’s amazing. It’s incredibly fast and very reliable.
I am on 1gig package as well with no CGNAT. I checked before changing package from 400Mbps earlier this year and they said no NAT on 1Gbps.

Maybe they have made a mistake oin your case. My understanding is that it's only the lower service tiers that get a NAT address.
 
I am on 1gig package as well with no CGNAT. I checked before changing package from 400Mbps earlier this year and they said no NAT on 1Gbps.

Maybe they have made a mistake oin your case. My understanding is that it's only the lower service tiers that get a NAT address.
Only the top plan has public IPv4. The 1gb started to be sold with NAT a few months ago. You may have changed plan just in time before the change.
 
Only the top plan has public IPv4. The 1gb started to be sold with NAT a few months ago. You may have changed plan just in time before the change.
Yes I see that now, I went and did some reading after my last post. It's very bad news indeed that they have made this move. Hopefully I'll be able to keep my public IP by not changing anything with the contract when it ends.
 
Top
Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £24.00 - 26.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
NOW UK ISP Logo
NOW £24.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £25.99
145Mbps
Gift: £50 Reward Card
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £17.00
200Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Youfibre UK ISP Logo
Youfibre £23.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Sponsored Links
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (6024)
  2. BT (3639)
  3. Politics (2720)
  4. Business (2439)
  5. Openreach (2405)
  6. Building Digital UK (2330)
  7. Mobile Broadband (2144)
  8. FTTC (2083)
  9. Statistics (1899)
  10. 4G (1814)
  11. Virgin Media (1763)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1582)
  13. Fibre Optic (1467)
  14. Wireless Internet (1462)
  15. 5G (1405)
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms  ,  Privacy and Cookie Policy  ,  Links  ,  Website Rules