PMMail/2 and Broken Telephone Connectinons

[Steve Lamb]

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On Thu, 15 Jul 1999 08:14:30 +0000, Winfried Tilanus wrote:

>Not very unlikely: My experience with 2 providers is that if you
>reconnect fast enough then you have a fairly good chance to get the
>same IP address.

    Very unlikely.  My experience working with 2 providers the past 5 years
and knowing the equipment, the chances of you getting the same IP these days
are slim and none and, uh, Winfried, Slim Pickins is dead.  :P

    What you say may have been true a few years ago, but not now.  A few
years ago providers actually used individual phone lines hooked into terminal
servers which allocated the same IP to the same phone number no matter what.
This means that *if* the modem bank didn't have any openings before the line
you just vacated, you might get back in every once and a while.

    Nowadays, unless your ISP is a *TINY* (<1000 customers) ma & pa shop out
in the boonies you're dialing into a terminal server that takes channelized
T1s.  The phone companies rotate which channel you come in on across *all*
the
channels of *all* the T1s in a particular calling bank.  Furthermore, the
terminal servers now allocated IP space out of a range of IPs dynamically.
So, if you call back in you'd need to get on the same T1 as before and then
get the same IP allocated to you if it hasn't already been allocated
elsewhere.

    The smaller of the two providers I was with would take 1-2 hours to
rotate
through the available channel allocation even during peak hours.  5-6 during
off-peak hours.  The provider I'm working for now.  Well, with the amount of
customers they have, unless you have a static IP, your chances of getting the
same IP are about on par with winning a lotto in any given state.


- -- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
         ICQ: 5107343          | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
- -------------------------------+---------------------------------------------

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