Gidday all you fellow geeks! I have lurked for a while, but now I need to get some recommendations;
My situation is that I run a home office, in Hastings central, on a tight budget.
Currently have: UFB business 100/100 with Unlimited Internet, static IPv4, VOIP for barely used home phone line, unlimited traffic.
I host my own websites on a server that I built, inside the office. When I first joined UI, I did so in order to get the IPv6 they offered, as Google's Gmail, and probably others, refuse email from servers that are not IPv6 addressed. So UI sold me the plan based on that; static IPv4, IPv6.
Then I find out that the router I had didn't support IPv6 (netgear r6300v2), so talked to UI, and they sent me their modem router, a cheap and nasty Kasda box, that did get IPv6, BUT it didn't offer the ability to talk to my own servers from inside my own network using DNS (Nat reflection i think you call it), meaning that email clients had to be changed every time they left the network, from local lan IP, to domain name. The other thing I needed was more than 32 port forwards in order to make life simple for hosting and administration. Sigh. Anyway, got the hosting going with IPv4, only to find that UI had blocked the ports I need, ie 25 and 80, so had to go to the Business plan in order to get them to let that through.
So then I head away to Auckland for a year of study, leaving the Mrs and children, running on the netgear. Whilst in the big smoke, I figure out what is going on with the shortfalls of the modems, and decide to go for a Ubiquiti Edgerouter ERX. So on mid-year break I install this delightful little box, and got it happily running, such that all port forwarding that I need is good, and firewall is good, and static IPv4 is good. But wait, isn't this supposed to work with IPv6 too? Stuff around for ages, trying to get some sort of result in the form of the IPv6 address I know my ISP has given me. Nothing. Eventually give up and call UI. "oh yeah, we no longer do IPv6." "Since when, and when were you going to tell me?" "Oh, since 3 weeks ago. And the other 2 people that had it haven't complained yet!" Good grief. So apparently their techs decided that IPv6 wasn't worth their trouble, and pulled the plug on it, and have not decided if nor when they will bring it back.
Other than these niggles, UI have been consistent with their service. But now I feel that in order to accomplish what I want to do ( host my own websites and email internally ), I need to move to another ISP.
So the TL;DR is:
I require minimum 100/100 UFB plan, with VOIP, static IPv4, static IPv6, Unlimited traffic (or near enough), and the ability to host internally. Currently I am paying $100/month. Open to a bit more, but not too much.
I have looked for lists of ISPs that offer IPv6, but the lists are years out of date.