Why is my home IP address dynamic?
To be able to control devices in your home remotely, you need to be able to connect with them from anywhere in the world. To do that, you need to know what the IP address is of the router in your home. The challenge is, for most, is that you don’t have one, or more specifically, the one you have changes from time to time. These changeable IP addresses are called “dynamic IP addresses”. So it’s likely that your home internet connection IP address can and will change from time to time, typically when you reset or power on your modem, or even randomly by your service provider whenever they want to. While many businesses and network infrastructure have fixed “static IP addresses”, they aren’t common for home internet access, there are a few reasons why…
When internet connections were first being provided into homes, the internet was dial-up (yikes!) and most users connected for short periods of time, then disconnected. There were a limited number of IP addresses at the time (the IPv4 protocol had about 4 billion addresses) and it didn’t make sense to use an IP address for a device that may be connected only a few hours every once in awhile.
Cost and convenience for the service providers played a role as well. Dynamic IP addresses are easier for service providers if you move or change equipment. They also used static vs dynamic IP addresses as a way to differentiate their offerings between homes and businesses, and dynamic IP addresses made it harder for someone to setup a server in their home and drive a lot of internet traffic, without paying for the more expensive business-class service. Most internet service providers charge a premium for a static IP address.
Having a dynamic IP address does make life a bit easier for a typical home internet user, it’s easy to change-out your router, a bit more secure from an attack perspective, and it makes it a bit harder for someone to track website usage and browsing habits (assuming you already have other things turned-off). What dynamic IP addresses don’t do, is make it easy to connect to your devices at home remotely…
