I've been using a VPN service for a few months now. Overall, it gets the job done - hides my ip address.
But at least this one service I am using changes my IP address every few minutes. I guess that hides things better, BUT can cause problems in some cases?
Curious if this is a common or uncommon 'feature' and what people think of it. And if that 'feature' has a name?
I wanted to see a streaming movie at a regional online streaming film festival in another state (they say you had to be in that area to be able to watch.)
I used the VPN and chose a location near the festival.
I rented the movie - i could stream unlimited times within 48 hours I think.
I watched it fine. I went back later in the day to watch with my wife (the VPN app had been running the whole time when watching and afterwards) .
It balked saying the rental is tied to a different IP address - it was thinking I gave someone else the link to the movie / it was tied to my original IP address?
That's when I saw that my public IP changed...not just if I stopped / started the VPN service, but it also was changing my ip address every few minutes when the app was running. The VPN service said that's they way they do things... I can't toggle a setting in their app to keep the same IP address.
Wonder what people think of that. Should I buy a VPN service that does / doesn't do that?
You use VPNs to make it look like you are in another country to watch movies that are restricted where you are, right?
Conceivably, services could use that constant changing IP address as a flag that the person is using a VPN. Even if the IP address just changes in the last octet / same subnet. Most any internet provider, I think, even with dynamic IP addresses, doesn't change your IP every few minutes.
I wrote a batch file that logs my public IP address. With the VPN on, this is what I got:
Fri 12/19/2025 14:00:00.08 209.87.169.115
Fri 12/19/2025 14:05:00.59 209.87.169.102
Fri 12/19/2025 14:10:00.60 209.87.169.100
Fri 12/19/2025 14:15:00.59 209.87.169.107
Fri 12/19/2025 14:20:00.69 209.87.169.83
Fri 12/19/2025 14:25:00.61 209.87.169.89
This is completely meaningless. An internet provider doesn’t need to rely on your constantly changing IP to determine whether you’re using a VPN. Most VPN protocols have obvious characteristics that can be detected.
For service providers, as long as they see that your IP is coming from another server, they already know you’re using a VPN.
Frequent IP rotation is normal for some VPNs, but it can break logins and streaming. A static or longer session IP is usually better for that.
I would expect it to change regularly.
NAT round robin. A pool of IP addresses have been allocated for outbound connections and successive connections will be bound to an IP:port set. Connections should be sticky, meaning when you make a connection and keep it alive, that IP will remain in use. It may even appear you're connecting from more than one IP simultaneously.
I use this method myself for a shared service, a small block of IP's (4 /32's) have been allocated for outbound NAT and is used in a round-robin manner. This helps prevent breaking connections when more than one user is using the same service (VoIP, gaming, real time protocols).
CG NAT also does this but because of port exhaustion
Yep. CG-NAT usually deploys several gateways doing this and customers funnel through one or more for their area. MAP-T would be better in these scenarios, as this would at least allow some inbound connections (and lessen the burden on hardware that CG-NAT carries).
[deleted]
Well, aren’t you a special customer
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How do you know what vpn I use? Why is mine crap?
Oh they blocked me too because of my difficult question 😆
You can't change the IP address of established connections anyway. But the exit node can select an IP address for a new connection from a pool with IP addresses. Technically it won't be any problem for a web server if a new connection uses another IP address.