DSL: IP Address "randomness"

Greetings all.

I recently got AT&T DSL installed at my home. I'm using a Netgear DGN2200 modem/wireless router. I can easily log into the router control panel/page and 'Disconnect' and then 'Connect' to get a different IP address.

My question is this... I notice that the IP address always looks like:

71.146.XXX.YYY

The 71.146 are always the same. The XXX and YYY do a pretty good job being unique just about every time.

What does the 71.146 correspond to? Just curious.

Do you think this provides enough 'uniqueness' when creating accounts or posting on classified sites/etc that like to monitor IP addresses? Or do you think that sites will notice the 71.146.xxxxxxxx looking too similar and it will make my life difficult?

Does anyone know a way to get this 71.146 portion of the IP address to change when using AT&T?

Thanks in advance!
Chris

what is your speed?

AT&T probably owns all the IP blocks underneath 71.146. ie. 71.146.1-256.1-256. If those are the only IP blocks that they own then there's no way to get an IP that's not under those octets without using a proxy.

If you're signing up for tons of accounts then you should bite the bullet and sort out a proxy solution (free or paid).

You can see the IP allocations for all US ISPs at ARIN:

Thanks for the reply.

Let's assume for a minute that AT&T owns all the blocks underneath 71.146.
256x256 unique IPs (over 65k). Then that means at any point in time, there could reasonably be dozens of AT&T users on certain websites at any given time (...maybe even hundreds). If that is the case, then it seems like it would be impractical for those sites to view all these unique IPs as a threat. It doesn't seem like it would consider them each to be the same person and therefore block/ban them all (if they are seeing too many accounts being made, or too many ad postings/etc).

What do you think?

Chris

True in theory and with a big ISP you have less to worry about. However:

* Not all of those IPs will actually be allocated to residential users and the real pool of IPs you're drawing from will be somewhat smaller.
* If you piss a service off and they start hunting you out, it's still easy for them to match your IPs against other footprints eg email addresses, browser footprints, similarities in your profiles etc.
* AT&T is heavy on spam complaints, both in terms of people fucking with their IPs and their users doing dodgy shit. I've had several seriously-worded complaints from AT&T legal for unknowingly scanning their IP ranges for open proxies.

If you don't want to endanger your precious internet connection then best to get some proxies if you are serious and are cranking up the scale. If you are keeping it small time then you could of course hope to just slide under the radar, but be warned that AT&T are assholes.