Rapid changes in my Dynamic IP Address

  • 4 November 2022
  • 35 replies
  • 4699 views
D
Userlevel 2
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Recently the dynamic public IP address assigned to me by T-Mobile Home Internet service started behaving differently.  The IP address (reported by google when doing a google search for “what is my ip address”) changes very rapidly,  about once per second, sometimes even faster.

This is very strange.  All the dynamic IP addresses I’ve had assigned in the past by other internet service providers (cable, dsl, etc.) did change over time,  but the changes were only once or twice per day,  not once per second.

The problem with the rapid changes is that some websites detect IP address changes and consider this a security risk.  For example if I’m trying to log in to a website,  I will enter my username and then enter my password, but when I click “login” button the website will take me immediately back to a blank login page.  Or when I try to log in to webmail at my domain hosting provider it will post an error message saying “your IP address has changed...” and won’t let me log in.   Again, some websites are sensitive to the rapid IP address changes,  others are not.

I did not experience these problems when I first started using T-Mobile Home Internet service (early part of this year) on the specific websites that are currently having problems,  so the rapidly changing public/dynamic IP address seems to be a recent issue.

Since my public dynamic IP address is assigned by the T-Mobile system,  that’s where the problem exists.  It is not a problem with my computers, home network, etc.

I made a screen capture video showing the rapidly changing IP addresses - I hope the T-mobile engineers (I have a support ticket submitted) can view this video to help understand what’s going on.  Anyone can view the video, here’s the link:

Demonstration of Rapidly Changing Public IP Address

 

 

35 replies

N
Userlevel 1

Anyone have any updates on this? 

Our helpdesk has now been reporting a lot of tickets with people running T-Mobile home internet (specifically in Minneapolis, MN) that are bouncing IPs so often they get booted from just about any corporate authenticated app they are trying to access.

S

I would love to hear an update from T-Mobile too. I happen to be one of those users in Minneapolis that  works from home and relies on T-Mobile home internet to connect to corporate systems. In the last few weeks I’ve been experienced a significant uptick in issues authenticating and having connections reset, and I’m seeing the same constantly jumping IP issue others have mentioned here.
 

It’s annoying have to a streaming service boot you for too many “users” or have to re authenticate all the time, but it’s crucial to have a reliable connection to work from. I’d hate to do it, but if it comes down to going back to the office or switching ISPs, I’ll be switching the ISP. 

S
Userlevel 1

I’ve had this happen intermittently for a few months now.  Restarting the device would fix it, but now I am going on 2 days in this state.

I made a short video showing the public IP address changing every few seconds.   https://www.dropbox.com/s/4gmk4qpaseopicp/Screen%20Recording%202022-11-10%20at%207.55.06%20AM.mov?dl=0

Symptoms of the problem I have observed are:

  • Poor bandwidth
  • High Latency
  • Some websites log you out immediately after logging in
  • Unintelligible , dropped or unable to make VoIP calls
  • Pages fail to load
S
Userlevel 1

A quick update,  I was about to take the home internet device back to the store, so I connected to my iPhone 13 and ran the same test.   The public IP address is constantly changing for it as well. 

This has to be a T-Mobile infrastructure problem. 

 

 

S
Userlevel 1

Additional details

My online backing does not like this either:

  • The online bill-pay will not let me initiate any payments when on the T-Mobile 5g. I have to do my banking in the public library.
  • I can check me transactions however every time I go in to the portal, I need to fully re-authenticate my device:

     

S
Userlevel 1

There is an option for a static public IP with T-Mobile Business.  I just placed an order for that and will cancel my Home Internet once the Business Internet is up.   Hoping for early Monday delivery of the new gateway.

As I said before, for 8 months my Home Internet was mostly fine, but now it is unusable.

Providing a stable IP address should have been part of the design.  Mobile IP standards have been around for 20 years.  The latest is RFC 3344 in 2010 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3344

Here is a simplified description https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/mobile-internet-protocol-or-mobile-ip/

T

Same issue as mentioned above, which just recently started for us, in the Minneapolis area.  The IP address (and frequently the location) changes every few seconds. 

It wasn’t happening a few weeks ago, but it is now, and it is affecting my ability to do certain work from home activities that I need to do.

Does anyone from T-Mobile monitor these channels?  They’re in very serious danger of losing a customer who’s been reasonably happy until now. I’ve also advised several others to try out T-Mobile, but that’s not something I’d dare do again until this is resolved.

W
Userlevel 1
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I have the same thing going on lately !

IP Changes in minutes / seconds not days !

A short lease of my IP address just started happening to me,

My external IP address is changing once or twice per minute! As you can imagine, this is really inconvenient because many sites check for this and boot the user when their IP address changes mid-session causing the user to login again.This is NOT about having a static IP. Its that the IP is changing as frequently as every few SECONDS. The wreaks havoc with many sign ins as if your IP changes mid-transaction it invalidates the transaction and you CANNOT LOG INTO THINGS YOU NEED TO!

N
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I'm having this same problem. It's especially aggravating to me because I manage a website. Beginning a few days ago, the Cpanel (where you do all the backend stuff for a website's server) for my shared hosting plan started kicking me out every couple of seconds because "your IP address has changed." I also tried using FTP to get to the server, and it also won't let me into my root directory. This is crazy! 

My research shows that T-Mobile doesn't really use IPv4. It uses only IPv6 and something called 464XLAT. I won't pretend to understand the concept, but 464XLAT is billed as a way to connect to an IPv4 host over an IPv6 network. I might suppose that part of what it does is produce IPv4 addresses on the fly. Well, something has gone wrong! It shouldn't be giving us new IPv4 addresses every couple of seconds!

T-Mobile, please address this and fix it.

W
Userlevel 1
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Yeap .. something has changed  ;( Def was NOT happening now is ..

I hope the guys a T-Mobile read these Comments !

M
Userlevel 1

ugh… well, add IRS.GOV to the list of sites that do not play nice with the rapid changing IP address for logins. https://sa.www4.irs.gov/ola/

I have to switch over to my slow DSL line that at least retains a public side IP address for days.  Otherwise the IRS site during login just says “A technical problem has occurred. Please try your request again later.”

M

I’ve been struggling with this IP-4 address “switching” every couple seconds as well.  I found that getting a VPN seems to have solved all my issues.  I now seem to have a “static” IP-4 and am able to login to sites, FTP etc.  I’m using Nord but I’m sure any VPN service will work.

M

Yep, using a VPN is a workaround for the T-mobile NAT issue (Your IP address is not really changing, just the t-mobile NAT’s (network address translation) it differently for every new connection to a different destination IP).  if your IP was actually changing, the VPN would be disconnected every time it changed.

 

By using a VPN you are using the VPN providers to be your exit point for all  your traffic that goes out to the internet, and they do not have a NAT issue.

 

Mike

N
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Thanks for the info! You prompted me to check on the price of the small business plan, and it’s the same as I’m paying for home internet. This really surprises me. If it comes with a static IP, then it sounds like it’s what I need!

B

Software engineer of 20 years here, you can demonstrate this easily with a single powershell script aimed at the Rest service provided by no-ip that you can trigger when your ip change. It is changing as many as 10+ times second, but they appear to be from a set pool, just random order. 
 

i suspect this is prevent abuse of people hosting services behind dynamic ips, because I was flustered as well. It forces segmentation into business and consumer, but is a pain for DNS adblockers, which is why I even am as far down this rabbit hole as I am. It makes sense though from t-mobile standpoint though. But it completely breaks DNS ad blockers so my business just lost a ton of money invested in AdGuard. T-mobile, you are breaking those of us using services that rely on ip for identities and id 

 

also, this breaks authorization and proxies. All on all a horrible solution. Just watch egress, that’s it. 

M

Yep, this is a mess,  I do not think it is intentional, rather a misconfiguration of NAT64 device, or faulty firmware for said device that has been rolled out to Minneapolis region first.  Again, your IP address is NOT really changing..  However at the NAT device within T-mobiles Minneapolis core, a new source IP address is being utilized for the NAT translation for every new outbound connection.  Another possible reason would be that they have deployed a set of NAT64 devices behind a load balancer, and your traffic is being “load balanced” to a different NAT64 device with each new connection.  In any case, traffic from your real IP address, if it needs to be NAT’ed, but be NAT’ed to the same outbound side source address for every new connection, otherwise it breaks a great many sites on the internet and renders the internet gateway unusable.

 

It is easy to confirm that NAT is taking place, by using your t-mobile phone hotspot, and look at the the IP addresses that have been assigned by DHCP to your phone. (The internet gateway does not appear to let you see this information).   Go to any of a number of hosts that display your IP and note that the IP address the site reports, is not the IP address assigned to your phone.   Go to a different site that reports your IP address, note that it is different, and also note that your phone’s IP address has not changed.

 

Mike

M

Now appears to be resolved.

R

This has been happening to me the last couple months as well. I work from home and it has made it impossible to get any work done as I can’t connect to anything remotely or login to most websites due to immediately being logged off from an IP change. I finally had to get a business account just to be able to work, but since it isn’t unlimited I had to keep the home account as well. Maybe that’s their whole plan to make more money :P

N
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It appears that T-Mobile has fixed the problem! My IP address has stayed the same all day.

B
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Hasn’t for me. My ip address came up different on three Ip checkers within 60 seconds. Then 3 minutes later it changed on all of those sites. None of them are duplicates from the other ones  I have been on the phone with Hulu 23 x in the last 3 days     Now, today, 8 x due to the rapid changes in addresses.  Now a new error message comes up at the end of every show saying that Hulu only works on a home network, not a mobile one. I DO have a home network set up! We have broken down every bit of it & reset EVERYTHING. Even disconnected my VPN. At the end of the next show, the message comes back. Then internet signal goes out, as it has multiple x in the last 3 weeks18 x in the last 2 days. So I reboot the modem over & over. I keep getting zero mg upload problems even when my download is 86 mb. So it came back up, & here I am, back to the Not at home error screen again. Hulu says they have been avalanched with calls to reset the error. Problems with T-MOBILE have now consumed 5 hours of my day.  They are losing me as a customer. The speeds dump during high usage hours to as low as 3 mbps, or none at all. Can’t even use our other devices at the same time! This service has become horrendously undependable. No one at TM knows how to fix it, or blames Hulu, or they just don’t give a care about your service problems.  This is an unsustainable way to run a business.

 

B
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Not for me. Still changing ip addresses every few minutes. 

N
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I’m sorry to hear that. Hopefully, T-Mobile knows of the problem and is rolling out the solution by regions or something. I’m in Arkansas. It’s now been a full day, and my IP address is still the same as it was yesterday.

M

See other thread on topic as well.

 

Mike

S

Ran into all these issues. Downloaded/subscribed to NordVPN, problem solved, just need to launch VPN before logging into cPanel, Cisco secure email etc

T

I am also in Minneapolis, MN and having issues logging into trusted websites. cPanel is essential for my business and with it’s protective measures blocking IP addresses that change too frequently, I am unable to access my website.

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