Fort Collins Connexion comments for home servers?

[Bob Proulx]

blc wrote:
> I've been looking at Connexion... however as I run a (Gentoo)
> Linux personal mail/web/general use server at home I've been wondering
> about what it would take to change ISPs.

Motivation and some effort! :-)

> I suspect the main reason for the tremendous cost increases is that I do
> have a very grandfathered /29 static ipv4 allocation.  This
> existing infrastructure would be kind of hard to change.

> While Connexion apparently does have static IPs, last time I contacted
> them, I could only get 1.  I figure that to easily port over I would need
> two ipv4 addresses - and this would mean a certain infrastructure would be
> needed on Connexion's part to support this.  With that support, it'd
> make it easier to switch ISPs.

I also used to have a /29 with DSL through FRII via Qwest.  But you
have probably heard of the sad stories about FRII.  I was stuck at the
3Mbps/768Kbps until leaving there and switching to CentryLink myself.

However I decided that I didn't want to be pinched in that situation
again.  Therefore my house now has a simple consumer setup.  No static
IP addresses at the house.  It's DHCP.  And when I was on CenturyLink
the IP addresses would be changed whenever the modem rebooted.  Which
was often.

I moved all of my static IP servers to a bare metal server I maintain
in a rented office with a business network connection.  That office
has been Comcast but at the end of this month we are upgrading to Fort
Collins Small Business Connexion which is 256Mbps fiber.  It's
significantly less expensive than Comcast and our outbound is moving
from 10Mbps to 256Mbps so 25x faster.  Connexion Business rents out
individual IPs in sets of five.  But I haven't been through it yet.
So some details I will be finding out on the fly.  Ask me again next
month.

However like Stephen I recommend renting a cloud provider hosted node,
at the $5/month level is sufficient, to get a public static IP
address.  Then VPN between your dynamic house address at home to the
static IP on the server.  There are several of us doing exactly this
type of setup.  For email, web, and other services.  If you look at
the headers on this message you will see that I VPN it out through my
public server this way.  And the reverse.  Works great!

I could say a lot about this but not enough time so I will just say
for email I would put Linode on the short list.  For web and
everything else Digital Ocean is good but definitely NOT for email as
they have a poor reputation and it will affect your use of it for
email delivery.  Most of the other low cost vendors such as OVH and
Hetzner suffer similarly with low reputation email for delivery.

I have since CenturyLink at home switched to Fort Collins Connexion at
home last March and have been very much enjoying the fiber to the
house connection the past year.  Almost exactly half the cost and Gig
speeds.  It's been great!

> Anyone very familiar with Connexion and how their network is supplied to
> the home premises?

I changed my home network to be a simple typical consumer dynamic
address setup.  Simple allowed me to switch from CenturyLink to
Connexion with almost no effort at all.

> Are IP addresses assigned to their router or can it be bridged to
> ones own routers/machines?

The default will be router mode.  But I know a couple of people who
have switched from the default router mode to bridged mode and then
use a dd-wrt router behind it.

I have no trouble with the router mode and I prefer it that way.  But
the Nokia firmware for the UI is just a little buggy which makes it
confusing setting this up.  The client side Javascript will uncheck
boxes that need to be checked when making changes!  Bugs!  But if you
catch that and check the boxes a second time then everything is okay.
I route via the DMZ setting to my GNU/Devuan/Linux router behind it
which acts as my house router.

> Is it now possible to get multiple IPV4 addresses on a single (home)
> endpoint?

I haven't looked since I moved away from needing it.

> Is their reverse-DNS resolution system easily changed so
> I can continue to get smtp service?

On their Business Connexion plan I will find out at the end of the month.

> Also how does IPv6 work on Connexion, is it 6RD or does the supplied
> router have to do the routing?

As far as I can tell IPv6 is a native implementation and is not 6to4
tunneling.  I am still figuring out IPv6 myself but Connexion appears
fully supporting of IPv6.  My machines plugged into the Nokia modem
obtain NAT'd IPv4 addresses but fully publicly accessible IPv6
addresses.  You will want to make sure an IPv6 firewall is in place on
all of those systems.

> Yeah a lot of technical questions here that most people wouldn't concern,
> thanks in advance!

A very good use for the list!

Bob