Advice on gettin a good isp that doesnt restrict port fowarding

[spicy]

Hello Guys pls i was using an aircard and i got to find out that i cant port foward cos the isp i was using was restricting me,now i will like to get a new isp but i dont know how to get a good one that will not restrict me.pls can anyone drop in and advice what i should be looking for when getting an isp so that i can foward ports on my pc.thanks

[wimiadmin]

I'm quite certain any air card service is going to lock down the ports. However, on home services like DSL, ISPs will usually allow port forwarding without any issues.

Perhaps if you post the Country you are from, another user from your area can give their input.

[AboveTheLogic]

Best thing to do is to call around and find a sales rep who cares about your business and puts his/her name behind his/her word. This way, if you have problems with inbound connections, you have someone to follow up with.

Honestly, anyone can say "oh X provider doesn't block ports, etc.." - but in my experience, you never really know until you get the service and try it.

I've had a lot of headaches lately with cellular wireless and inbound connections... DSL or cable will be a much better way to go.

[0siris]

I'll reiterate what wimiadmin said with a bit more info: I worked for two US Cell Phone companies, and both of them trained me on data by stating that their data is meant for "transient" usage. Meaning connect, do some bit of work, disconnect. Not the kind of "always on" connection that port forwarding implies.

This *might* different with the Clear WiMAX rollout going on here in the USA. It's being offered as a kind of "citywide" wireless service, and so it might be more forgiving of static (physically stationary, I mean) or always-on kinds of scenarios. Like Port Fowarding.

OK, I just went and looked at Clear's terms of service. No go:

Nature of the Service.The Service provided to you is intended for reasonable, periodic, non-continuous use by a person using a computing device, consistent with the type of use made by a typical individual consumer of our Internet services. Examples of allowed uses of our Service include web surfing, sending and receiving email, sending and receiving photographs, occasional on-line gaming, and the occasional non-continuous streaming of videos and downloading of files. Examples of uses that are not permitted include the continuous unattended streaming, downloading or uploading of videos or other files, maintaining an unattended or continuous uninterrupted connection to the Internet such as through a web camera or machine to machine connections that do not involve active participation by a person, or operating an Internet hosting service such as web hosting or gaming hosting. You may not use the Service in a manner that impairs the user experience of other users, or that otherwise impairs network performance. Both fixed wire-line Internet service and wireless Internet service have limited bandwidth capacity. Like fixed wire-line service, CLEAR's Service can suffer from congestion and reduced performance when usage by some individuals exceeds the usage of typical individual consumers, thus having a negative impact on the entire network. This AUP is intended to ensure that the activities of a few users do not unfairly impair the activities of all users of the Service.

Mobile wireless is meant for... well... *mobile* wireless, and NAT/Port Forwarding isn't consistent with mobility.

[AboveTheLogic]

My company has at least two always-on PCMCIA cellular wireless cards with Verizon and AT&T - connected to linksys routers that have PCMCIA ports on the side.

With AT&T and a dynamic IP, inbound connections just don't happen - even with dynamic DNS... but when we upgrade to a static IP, it works fine at least for a while.

With Verizon and a dynamic IP, it works but not perfect... meaning that some protocols go through and others don't.

[0siris]

Are you sure that the cards are actually always on? For example, Kyocera sells a router similar to what you describe, The KR-1. As I recall, the router turns the data card off when not in use.

That's a consumer device, though. I'm aware that the four major carriers (I'm excluding T-Mobile, but only because I have no experience with their offerings) in the USA have specialty business products. Whether those products support NAT/port forwarding, I do not know. I tend towards not.

[AboveTheLogic]

I'm not sure that they are always on, but I can tell you that I had a tech on-site at the server and he was able to pull up google.com - but I couldn't get in from the outside at all. Changed to static IP, worked fine (AT&T).

Here is the router we use:

http://www.linksysbycisco.com/UK/en/support/WRT54G3G

[0siris]

Interesting. I wonder if that isn't also influenced by (again, if I'm right) that the router sort of "goes to sleep" and the cellular connection drops if it's not in use.

I would pretty strongly doubt that the connection refreshes on its own once it's broken. And so would require traffic from the client side to recreate the connection.

[AboveTheLogic]

You can set the idle time in the router for a max of 1440 minutes, which is 24 hrs.

In my case, there is definitely traffic happening at least once a day. If its not someone accessing the server, its the server synching with our main NTP server.