How to obtain a static/dedicated/publicly routable IP for gaming, business, and industrial applications?

⛔ *** DISCLAIMER *** : READ BELOW: CAUTION

It is a best practice to employ an Internet firewall that blocks inbound Internet traffic – that is, traffic initiated from outside your home or office network to your home network. Firewalls block this inbound traffic but allow outbound traffic like when you browse the Internet, stream, send/receive emails.

Hence, Services such gaming, business or industrial application that require a static or dedicated IP often do so because those “SERVICES” initiate traffic from a location on the Internet to the devices on your home network. Allowing inbound Internet traffic originating from the public Internet is inherently dangerous because it could enable attacking devices on your home network.

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BACKGROUND

The Further Reach network is designed with security in mind – inbound Internet traffic is not allowed to reach subscribers. This is an industry best practice and was carefully implemented to protect subscribers from external threats.

However, some services require static IPs and your ability to receive inbound traffic. Examples may include some gaming (xbox, ps4, etc), and some antiquated industrial applications. For these cases, a static/dedicated IP can be obtained and used over the Further Reach network.

OPTIONS

  1. Do-It-Yourself.  You can procure and configure a static, publicly available IP for about $200 in gear and a few dollars a month.  We’ve provided additional details below.
  2. Hire Further Reach.  We can set up a customer-owned system.  The hardware is about $200 and labor about $300. You will still need to pay a few dollars a month to a third party.  Support for this system is on a time and materials basis.
  3. Turnkey.  Further Reach can provide a fully supported turnkey solution for $50 monthly.

DO-IT-YOURSELF STEPS

These steps were written in September 2024. You are welcome to check with our support team if anything has changed since then.

  1. Purchase Purevpn with both Port Forwarding and Dedicated IP add-ons. It costs a few dollars a month.  There are other service providers you can explore. We know that PureVPN has the features needed.
  2. Purchase a OpenVPN Router that can run an OpenVPN client.  We have tested Synology routers  which startat $120 (MR2200ac).
  3. Connect your OpenVPN Router’s WAN/Internet port on your Further Reach Router / Access Point using a network/ethernet cable.
  4. Configure your OpenVPN Router to connect to PureVPN
    1. See How to set up OpenVPN on Synology Router.  https://support.purevpn.com/en_US/synology/how-to-setup-purevpn-on-synology-nas
  5. Configure port forwarding on your OpenVPN Router if you want to be able to remotely connect to a device plugged into the OpenVPN Router
  6. All Done!
    • Your Static / Dedicated Public IP address is your PureVPN IP address
    • Traffic to that IP address will be forwarded to the ports and devices configured on your OpenVPN Router