So what do you remote Tablo users do if your ISP's IP address changes?

General Discussion
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Accessing any network device remotely depends on either DNS resolution of the device name or having the static IP of the outward facing network connection. When you purchase Internet service you either have a DSL modem, or a cable modem, etc. And with that your ISP has an Internet address on the external interface of said modem. That is almost always DHCP, static costs those people money to maintain and they charge extra to give out static IP addresses to you at home. Hell, it costs us bucks as a government agency! Pretty big bucks, too.
So when you fire up a device and decide to connect to your home Tablo - how do you know what IP address to aim for - especially say if your modem goes offline for a few minutes and your modem comes back up with a different DHCP address from your ISP.

How can you connect to a device on a private address which isn’t Internet routable using an external address that could change at the drop of a hat? One example I went through today - the service provider for one of our offices called and said they they had a big business that had moved, they had laid fiber in the area of our office and they were reassigning IP addresses and our router would be getting a different address. 
And a while back we experimented with addresses assigned like normal HOME account addresses but found that now and then an office address would change due to a reboot of some equipment or ISP maintenance and we’d lose connection to that office or the ability to get to it remotely. 
How does this thing work if your modem or outside router gets a different address? How does your iPad or whatever know what IP to hit to get inside your network? Don’t tell me you all have static addresses from your ISP as I know for a fact that ain’t happening.
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From what I can tell your Tablo phones home to the mothership and provides your external IP. Log into your account and click the drop down for your device. You will see bothe internal and external IPs.

I have no idea how often that gets updated though and what triggers an update.

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AHA! That’s sort of what I wondered and is likely the reason that if your Internet is down for any reason, parts of Tablo simply don’t work or don’t work well even when local and not remote (I can’t even use Tablo at all if the Internet is down for us)
What you said makes sense - so your remote device, iPad or phone or tablet, it actually contacting tablotv.com, getting the info for your Tablo and you access it that way. So unless your router or modem has been down in the last few moments, it should work as they, meaning the Tablo folks and their servers, keep track of that for you. 

(sort of like dynamic DNS in a way)
And that makes sense then also since you need to pair a device with the Tablo at some point prior to leaving home so your device knows about your Tablo, I assume the MAC and so on. 
OK, that pretty much explains it. 
Love the “mothership” terminology.
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E.T. phone home.

We’ll wait and see if someone wants to use a sniffer and report the answer. I use to listen on a TCP virtual circuit to receive commands from the mothership or detect when the connection reset…

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@luker @ShadowsPapa @zippy 


Yep that’s exactly how it works :slight_smile:
Loving the ‘phone home’ analogy, though.
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