> In any case, I'd start making noises at your ISP. If your IP changes all
> the time, you'd be unable to run IRC or anything else that requires an
> extended TCP connection. This also means there may be a solution here. Try
> connecting an IRC client to one of the standard IRC servers and leaving it
> idle. If the connection stays up, good, your IP should be the same. If it
> dies, I'd consider telling your ISP where to shove their (non) service. :)
The last is right, but for a rather different reason: the IRC protocol
contains regular ping messages. A connected IRC client should prevent
the connection from going down at all, unless forced by the ISP.
So the proper way to test this is to use a telnet session, or SSH with
all the various keepalive options turned off (and no inactivity
timeout on the other end).
Olaf
PS. I've used a CIPE connection between two machines, one of which was
on a non-constant SOCKS proxy and one on a dynamic dialup with an
inactivity timeout of two minutes. Initial session establishment via
PKCIPE and dyndns.org. Worked flawlessly.