Need: Internet host at a fixed IP address for full-stack self-hosting

People want to perform self-hosting in an area where no ISP provide sufficient service with a fixed IP address. They provide one IP address that changes at least once every week and has bad reputation (regarding spam).

Whatever the reason, a fixed IP address is definitely needed (actually, the address will be one of the glue records for a domain in the whois database, to host a full-stack DNS-mail-http-everything server, but the actual reason does not matter so much, let's just say that a fixed IP is needed).

How to do that ?

Is there a reasonable solution to have the host reachable at a fixed IP address ?

Non-solution

Dynamic DNS is a non-solution. It's fine for casual access of high level services by a handful of users, not for hosting a mail server, for those reasons: (1) it adds a single point of failure, (2) people report delayed updates with usual dynamic dns providers, (3) changing IP breaks existing TCP connections, (4) ever-changing IP puts your mail server on IPs with bad reputation that you can't fix and won't register on RBL services, (5) fundamentally dynamic DNS comes far downstream, you can't update a whois glue record which assumes a fixed IP, you obviously can't self-host the very DNS server which will have a CNAME to the dynamic DNS service anyway.

Possible trail towards a solution ?

• Use some form ot tunneling to have the server reachable via a fixed IP (v4 or v6) through some service like http://tunnelbroker.net/ .
• The tunnel could be used either for all traffic, for the part of the traffic that needs fixed IP (DNS, mail, HTTP server), and perhaps a self-hosted dynamic DNS (would provide a different host name that would resolve at any time to the variable IP address, without the need to depend on an external dynamic DNS).
• The variable address would be used for client activity, web browsing, downloads, for e.g. sharing Linux distributions ISOs on peer-to-peer networks). Pros: (1) much lower in the stack, provides a fixed IP compatible with a glue record and all the stack above. (2) on ISP address change, TCP connections to fixed IP address aren't broken, though there might be a pause while the tunnel reconfigures. Cons: another single point of failure, downtime on ISP address change ?

Questions

• Does it make sense or would it fail or be impractical for some reasons ?
• Would the tunneling work well ? How about a downtime when ISP-supplied IP address changes ?

Context

Several computed running Windows XP SP3 had remote desktop working okay. One could use Microsoft's client mstsc.exe on another WinXP, or rdesktop from Linux.

Problem

Suddenly one day, remote desktop started to have problems with rdesktop. The symptom is :

disconnect: Server initiated disconnect.

and the connection gets closed. This happens within 5 seconds from successfully authenticating. Connection can stay ok a long time as long as you don't authenticate successfully. This is reproducible every time.

Same problem happens with Windows client mstsc.exe, a window opens telling (translated from french) "Your session had ended. It may have been closed by an administrator. Try reconnecting. If problem persists please request help from an administrator."

Investigation

I have looked in Event Viewer, no event is correlated with connection attempts. I have captured stream in wireshark for analysis. Wireshark mentions :

DomainMCSPDU: disconnectProviderUltimatum, reason: rn-provider-initiated.

VNC works on the same machines. Machine are nearly new, not much software was installed, only Windows components and hardware drivers. Just in case it matters at all, video board is Matrox Millenium P690 PCI with dual-DVI output. Sometimes, doing remote desktop to an already running session causes a window to appear about "PowerDesk-SE Application" crashing. We have seen the machine start with broken dual-head configurations (windows behaves like left screen is active, though no signal comes out, and right screen has 256 colors instead of 24 ou 32bpp), that was fixed by running the Matrox tool from the tray.

I am clueless about why the connection gets closed.

Questions

Has anyone experienced such a problem ? How to solve it ? Any hint ? Thanks.