Well, I've had this running continuously (24/7) for more than 2 months, and excluding the odd brownout/power failure that happen periodically here and where the IP address would almost certainly be renewed, I'm left none the wiser!
Simply put, my ISP seems to renew IP addresses at random. The longest period between IP-changes was over 19 days. Whereas yesterday and during one 24hr period, it was renewed 3 times! Go figure...
So, not really of much use in helping determine when it would be a good time to try downloading a really large file from Letitbit (see initial post) - at least with my ISP.
Edit: An observation. I recently moved house and my wireless provider's signal at the new location really sucks! Initially I could barely connect at all, however my ISP seemed to be 'dynamically' searching for the best frequencies for my connection for the first few weeks. I counted on one occasion being disconnected/reconnected over 10 times in a single hour. I have also witnessed these inconvenient disconnections many times since, though nowhere near as many concurrently. What seems to happen is that when I start to to max-out my download speed on a really bad connection (50-100kB/s), the ISP will intentionally disconnect/reconnect to try and improve the speed. This is both welcome and maddening - it depends on what's been downloaded. The signal today was particularly bad, coming in between 19 - 22%. Normally it's between 30 - 40% I often had no better a signal level at the old address but generally had great download speeds - 600-700kB/s, which is about all my Huawei E122 modem can provide. So now I'm beginning to wonder if it could be a poor contention-ratio that's at the root of my problem.
I also bought a 3G antenna in the hope of improving things. This turned out to be a disaster. This (passive) antenna had an advertised 30DBi gain - this equates to a signal-gain of 1000!!! Had I done the calculation before ordering it, I don't think I would have bought it. It turns out to have a negative-gain - the signal-strength actually drops when it's connected! I gave the Ebay Seller a 'neutral' feedback-rating (rather than negative-feedback) reasoning they were merely a reseller, so weren't to blame. So I was surprised when Ebay advised me to open a case against them if I wasn't happy with their product - which I proceeded to do. I was in quick succession contacted by the Seller asking me to reverse my decision, informing me that Ebay now will remove Sellers that have more than a 5% per month customer dissatisfaction-rate, having received either 'neutral' or 'negative' feedback - this really seems to terrify Ebay Sellers! Compare this to the 'couldn't-case-less' attitude of Aliexpress Sellers! Suffice it to say, I got to keep the antenna while also getting an on-the-spot refund! Of course, the antenna is a worthless good-for-nothing piece of crap, so no real gain! (pun intended).
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