How to circumvent a private WAN IP address?

Question

I just signed up with a new ISP and I got a dynamic private-range (172) IP as WAN address on my firewall/router, so I can't do any port forwarding. They say that to do port forwarding I must buy a fixed IP, for which they ask a fortune and it's a life-time fixed IP address, that I will never be able to change (unless I pay double that fortune).

Is there anyway to work around this problem? The DynDNS client gets my public IP, which unfortunately doesn't really point to me.

Many thanks for any hints.

Solution

If my assumptions based on your problem are correct, you will need to source your IP address externally - and unfortunately there is a cost associated with it. Look for a company that will provide you with a VPN service (I'd recommend one using OpenVPN) - and that provides a real IP address to you. There are a few of these providers arround.

This solution will entail a performance hit (because of the longer routing). The alternative is to change to another ISP.

Comments

[davidgo]

What is the second set of digits on your IP ? Not all addresses starting with 172 are private. It sounds to me like your so-called ISP is not actually providing proper Internet services.

[Rain]

ISPs have started doing this recently. What ISP is it? I know on some (Verizon DSL, for example) you can simply ask for a public IP address if you need one.

[chris]

I can't remember the second set, but it's definitely private. The ISP is MyRepublic in Singapore. As I said, they give you a fixed public address, but they charge a lot for it.

[chris]

Interesting. So then I configure the port forwarding on the VPN side, right?

[davidgo]

You would probably not need to configure port forwarding as the the VPN endpoint would be on your computer, ie real world IP address would be bound to the computer running the VPN client so if that machine is the one you are trying to access, no forwarding is neccessary. (In more complex environments routers running OpenWRT/DD-WRT or more expensive routers allow you to configure a VPN as a virtual interface on a router and then port forward that)