Canadian Broadband → server with static IP in montreal

Hello everyone!

I've been running a personal server/lab at home for nearly 30 years now, and for almost as long, I've been using a static IP for my email server.

Recently (end of 2022), I switched to Oricom for my office and i'm quite satisfied with their service. But now, I'm moving my service to my home office, and Oricom is refusing to offer the "business" service without a Quebec Enterprise Number (NEQ)!! What the...

I currently have a 250/50mbps package with 1 "clean" static IP for 129$/mth +tx, on which I run various services, including HTTPS and SMTP (yes, even outgoing!). It seems like this kind of setup is quite rare these days!

I was with Teksavvy before, but I see that they only offer up to 120/20mbps at my address... and pretty expensive compared to oricom.

What should I do? Are there still any decent providers out there offering static IPs?

They're available with the business packages at most ISP's, even the incumbents.

But you might want to ask yourself how much value you place on actually pointing those services at your home IP. There's options to self-host that don't require a static IP - you can use a zero trust tunnel from Twingate or Cloudflare, for example, to host most of your services without a static IP. (I'm hosting my website, my jellyfin instance, and my passbolt instance on a Cloudflare tunnel, with a dynamic address, for example). Zero Trust tunnels also let you VPN into your home network without having to actually expose the VPN ports, because it can proxy arbitrary TCP on client workstations which have been authorized in the network.

E-mail is a bit of a pain in the butt... you *can* tunnel it, and Cloudflare even offers an MX service where they can be your primary mx & forward mail to a local self-hosted server, but I'm not doing it so I don't know how well it works. I stopped self-hosting my e-mail about 10 years ago because I just didn't have the time or energy to deal with spam filters - I'm now using Cloudflare's MX service and pointing it at a gmail inbox that's configured to send as me@mydomain. It does mean letting Google manage my e-mail which may be a bridge too far, but it also means I don't have to worry about my outgoing mail getting tagged by an RBL because some overzealous nitwit decided to add a /16.

Tek has static, not sure about the rest. With the depletion of IPv4 that's getting harder and harder to obtain and it's becoming more and more expensive. I mean it's even difficult to get a globally routable dynamic IP from some ISPs now.

I would call Tek and see if they can get the same speed you want. Sometimes the database is wrong.

I haven't hosted in my home for 7 years. I use to have 5 full sized PCs. Email is now done at fastmail and I have a couple of VPSes. It's a heck of a lot less work (especially the email part) and it was way cheaper for me to just pay for the VPSes rather than have all that hardware refresh every so many years + electricity costs.

yeah i used to be with TSI, but they're prices have become just prohibitive.

I've considered getting a dumb line and VPN'ing out, but that seems like a pain in the back, more setup than what i planned for: everything is geared for home self hosting here, and has been for decades. Moving out of that setup will require a lot of work, and maybe i'll need to cross that bridge some day, but the whole point right now is to avoid that.

but yeah, it's definitely getting like a more and more attractive option. it would just be a sad day when i give up and host "in the cloud". i still believe, oddly, in the power of the decentralized internet of the previous millenia, where you could host pretty much whatever wherever, and i'm still fighting for that right, and supporting those who let us live.

Even though I have my stuff on the outside, I actually have a tunnel to a Xenyth VPS in Toronto for my internet traffic (Toronto makes sense for me latency wise). That VPS has a static IP. What if you had a VPS with a static IP and forwarded that back to your home through a tunnel? You can also setup BGP with them if you want to get really into it (which is what I do).

Xenyth.com seems to be offline. Do they have a new brand now?

The website is xenyth.net

There is also Accuris Hosting, iFog GmbH, and Cloudie Networks.

Look into Cloudflare DNS. It will allow you to use a dynamic IP for your email server. That's what I do with no problems at all.

I appreciate the recommendations here, but I am not looking for advice on a hosting provider. I *am* a hosting provider, in fact. What I want is a decent uplink outside of a datacenter.

Cloudflare DNS will allow you to do that with your dynamic IP. I self host over 40 services using multiple domain names on my Bell connection.

Including e-mail? Bell filters outgoing SMTP (at least on residential service). Even if that weren't the case, you'd likely also be on residential IP RBLs, making it more likely for your e-mails to be filtered/marked as spam.

yes, including email. yes, bell filters outgoing SMTP, which is why I'm specifically asking for this. no, you don't necessarily end up on residential blocks, this is why I'm specifically asking for that as well.

look people: i've been doing this literally for decades. it's a thing.

SMTP can be done via SendGrid (for free) or similar services without issue. I personally use AuthSMTP, although it's almost doubled in price since my last renewal. I literally have zero problems self hosting email for 4 domains I own on my Bell connection. All of my emails get through.

Combine that with Cloudflare DNS and you have A and MX records always pointing to the correct place. Yes, you'd be depending on another service, but it's free and a static IP is a waste of money with the above workarounds.

Do they filter 587? I know they do filter 25, but for some reason I thought it was only 25. When I was self hosting my e-mail, I was on Teksavvy, who didn't filter it (at least at the time). As long as you set up the txt spf record correctly, you probably won't get hit by spamhaus... but you'd want something that's pretty sticky with the IP. Having your IP change could cause emails to bounce if the update to ddns on the hostname you set up for spf hasn't propagated. If I were to have a yin to self host my e-mail today, I'd go with a cheap VPS -- I like Ionos - $2/mo for a low spec box. I was looking into them when I had a thought of cloud hosting a pihole a while back, so I could point my cell phone at it for adblock when I'm out & about, but never got around to actually setting it up.

I get the desire to self host. I did it for a long time as well, and was something to put on the resume. But at a certain point fighting with ISP's & finding a class of service at a price point I want to pay, VPS starts to look very attractive. I didn't suggest Cloudflare as a hosting option above - it's an endpoint that lets you route services externally without actually exposing them on the firewall, which has the added benefit that I'm not actually exposing my home connection's IP. My nginx, jellyfin, passbolt, and nextcloud instances are still hosted in my home lab (along with other services I don't expose to the outside), I just had to fire up a cloudflare container alongside them to host the tunnel out to their network (you can install cloudflared on baremetal or a VM if you haven't gone to containers yet). I can still put the kubernetes experience on the resume and I still get to tinker, but it's a lot less headache and I don't have to think about DDNS updates. It's also not costing me anything - zero trust, their e-mail mx service & DNS are free for small installations. I never even had to give them a credit card to set it up.

I'm doing it with a VPN.. It is slightly more complicated to setup, but only slightly..

I have two /26 subnets routed home.. One is mine, one is a VPN provider's.. Yes the /26 is more than enough for me, I wouldn't have an issue going to /27s, but I see no reason to..

The advantage of this is that I can change local ISPs and keep the same IPs, also switch over to LTE during a local ISP outage.