Can I get a static IP address?
Yes — a static IP is $20/mo per IP on any plan, business or residential; Enterprise DIA includes static IPv4 with BGP routing available, and the residential 10 Gig plan includes a /30 block at no extra cost.
Most business connections use a dynamic address that can change. A static address does not, which is what you need for a VPN endpoint, a point-of-sale controller, a camera system you check from home, a mail or web server, or anything a firewall rule elsewhere has to trust by address.
- Any plan, business or residential — add a static IP for $20/mo per IP on top of your plan price. It is priced per address, so two static IPs is $40/mo. This works on all four business tiers (300 Mbps, 500 Mbps, 1 Gbps, 2 Gbps) and on residential plans too.
- Enterprise Dedicated Internet Access — static IPv4 is included, and BGP routing is available if you're announcing your own space or want control over how traffic reaches you. DIA is quoted per site.
- Residential 10 Gig (10,000 Mbps) — includes a /30 block of static IPv4 as part of the plan. A /30 is four addresses and gives you one usable static IP. See below for why.
A /30 is a block of four consecutive IPv4 addresses — subnet mask 255.255.255.252. Four addresses sounds like four usable ones, but that is not how IPv4 subnets work. Every subnet spends two addresses on itself:
| Address | Role | Can you use it? |
|---|---|---|
| First (e.g. `.0`) | Network identifier | No — it names the subnet |
| Second (e.g. `.1`) | Our gateway — the address your router sends traffic to | No — it's ours |
| Third (e.g. `.2`) | Yours — the static address you configure on your router's WAN | Yes |
| Fourth (e.g. `.3`) | Broadcast address | No — reserved |
So a /30 is four addresses, two of which are structural, one of which is our gateway, leaving exactly one usable static IP for you. That is the normal, expected arrangement for a point-to-point handoff, not a shortchange — a /30 is the smallest block that can carry a routed connection.
Your /30 is delivered on your service confirmation with the actual numbers. Set these on your router's WAN interface, switching it from DHCP to a static configuration:
- IP address — the usable address from your block (the third one in the table above).
- Subnet mask — `255.255.255.252`, which is the same thing as `/30`.
- Default gateway — our address, the second one in the block.
- DNS servers — as listed on your service confirmation, or a resolver of your choosing.
Use the exact addresses printed on your confirmation rather than assuming the ordering above — the `.1` / `.2` convention is typical but the block you are assigned is what governs.
One usable address is not one device. That address sits on your router's WAN side. Everything behind it — every computer, phone, camera and server on your LAN — still shares it through NAT, exactly as it would with a dynamic address. The difference is that the address never changes, so port forwards, VPN endpoints, DNS records and remote firewall rules keep working. If you need several public addresses that each answer independently, you need a larger block than a /30.
On 2 Gig and 10 Gig we delegate a /48 of IPv6 alongside IPv4. The lower three tiers do not carry one. If you have only ever dealt with IPv4 scarcity, that number is worth sitting with for a second.
A /64 is the standard size for one network segment — one VLAN, one LAN. A /48 contains 65,536 of them. So you can hand a separate /64 to staff, another to guest Wi-Fi, another to cameras, another to servers, another to whatever you build next, and never think about address space again. The IPv4 habit of counting addresses does not carry over.
IPv6 has no NAT, and that cuts both ways. Every device with an IPv6 address has a globally routable one. There is no port forwarding to configure, because there is nothing being translated — a device is simply reachable at its address. That is the upside.
The flip side is that NAT was quietly acting as a firewall for you. With IPv6 it is not there, so anything you do not want reachable from the internet needs an explicit firewall rule. Most modern routers default to blocking inbound IPv6, but "most" is not "yours" — check it rather than assume it, especially before you put a camera system or a NAS on the network.
The prefix is static. It does not rotate. That is the part that makes it useful rather than merely large: a static prefix can hold AAAA records in DNS, and a partner or a remote office can write a firewall rule against your addresses and have it keep working. A prefix that changed every few weeks could do neither.
So why would you still pay for a static IPv4 address? Because a good share of the internet still cannot reach you over IPv6 — some corporate networks, some older client software, some monitoring services. If something has to be reachable by anyone, from anywhere, it needs a static IPv4 address, and that is the $20/mo per IP above. If what you are reaching is your own equipment, from your own devices, IPv6 will often do the job without it. We would rather tell you that than sell you an address you do not need.
Residential plans below 10 Gig use dynamic addressing by default, and a dynamic address is the right choice for most homes. If you host something that needs to be reachable at a fixed address — a VPN back to your house, a home server, a camera system, a self-hosted media library — you can add a static IP at $20/mo per IP, the same price businesses pay. The 10 Gig plan is the exception: its /30 is included, so there is nothing extra to buy.
Contiguous blocks larger than a /30 — a /29 and up — are available on business plans. They are not sold at the flat per-IP rate. IPv4 address space carries its own leasing terms, so a block is quoted as part of your business quote, alongside the circuit, rather than listed at a published price.
Tell us how many independently reachable addresses you need and what they are for — a rack of servers that each answer on their own address is a different requirement from one address doing port forwarding — and it gets priced with the rest of the quote.
Call (617) 693-9434 or email [email protected] with your service address and what the address is for — a VPN concentrator and a camera NVR need different firewall handling on our side.
If that didn’t work
If your static address stopped answering, power-cycle your own router first, then call (617) 693-9434 — we can confirm from our side whether the address is still routed to your line.
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Talk to us
Call (617) 693-9434, Monday to Friday 8am–6pm ET, or email [email protected]. We answer within 24 hours, and usually within an hour.
Boston Broadband is a service-area business serving Boston, Brookline and Cambridge, Massachusetts. There is no counter to walk up to — phone, email and your account at myaccount.bostonbroadband.com are the ways in.