Contracting Static IP Address service

[Halcyon]

Hope I'm posting this in the right section...if not please move to appropriate section.

I would like to access my iMac at home from the office, as well as from any other computer connected to the internet. My cable modem has a dynamic IP and thus I would like to contract a service that allows to use your dynamic IP as a Static one.

I've Googled and found several companies that provide this service (DynIP, ThatIP, No-IP, etc.) but no nothing about these companies, as well as how efficient this service or modality is (i.e.- speed, reliability, up-time, etc.).

As I understand it, the best way to do this is to pay more and have your ISP assign you a static IP, but this is too expensive of an option with my ISP, specially what I will be using it (just personal use, so I can access files and some uploads and downloads).

Any advice and/or recommendations on the subject will be greatly appreciated...as well as other options/alternatives.

TIA

 

[MurphyM]

If you use a free service like logmein.com you can always access your Mac easily, from another Mac or a pc. Regardless of how often the ip changes.

You didn't say what kind of access you'd need or for what. But with logmein.com you should be able to do just about anything.

 

[Halcyon]

Thanks.
Signed up for logmein and gave it a try. Even though it was kind of slow and not exactly what I need, I'll keep the accont because I can foresee some usefulness in it.

I've also signed up for a free NO-IP account, which would work rather nice for my needs...only if I could get it to work. It seems to have some trouble with my cable modem/router connection. It seems that I need to do some port forwarding, etc....which I've never done. Also, to test it I need to be on a computer outside of my Lan (outside of my router), which makes it kind of hard to troubleshoot for a beginner like myself (i.e.- set the parameters in my system, run to me brothers house and try to access my FTP server, won't work so run bak to my house...you get the picture .-))

There's got to be an easier way to do this.

 

[MurphyM]

What exactly do you want to do when you access the mac at our house from somewhere else? FTP? Other stuff? Knowing that would help in terms of coming up with a solution.

Maybe your brother will let you set up logmein on his machine so you can access his machine to test accessing your machine from outside?

I've got a post on port forwarding.