More on Supposedly Dynamic IPs

Question

There are a few reasons why I'd like to be able to change my ip address, and none is shady. Here's one reason: I do a fair amount of internet research. On one project, I found that I was blocked from several websites. I contacted the webmaster who told me that it was probably because the previous IP address lessee had been banned from the site. I contacted my internet provider who swore that although I had a dynamic IP that hadn't changed in three years, the only way that I could fix the problem was to rent more static ir dynamic IP licenses. The provider said it couldn't change my ip address. This is absurd and impractical.

The second reason is that I am a writer. I enter literary contests. One of the largest and best known sites accepted one of my entries entry for publication. It took about six weeks for a response for that submission (reading time). The second submission took about three weeks for me to receive a rejection (again, reading time). All subsequent submissions were rejected within a day, sometimes within minutes of submission. All of my submissions after the third one were sent from different email addresses under different names. The publication seems to have an auto-reject that sorts by ip address. Fortunately, my submissions have been accepted elsewhere, but I'd like not to be rejected by an unthinking program. The fact that some of these lit mags require a reading fee but reject submissions in minutes indicates that the submission isn't read. This should be illegal.

I am sure that there are other ways in which those who hold never-changing ip addresses are being ripped off, tracked for commercial gain, etc. Is there really no way to change one's ip address. I've tried unplugging my modem for ten days while I was on vacation, only to find that the ip address hadn't changed. I switched internet providers. I got a new ip address, but six weeks on, it hasn't changed, even when I unplugged my modem for 24 hours just to see if it changed. It hadn't.

Answer 1

For changing your IP address, the best solution is to subscribe to a VPN service that has multiple servers world-wide.

By logging on any one VPN server, your IP address will change to one that conforms to the IP addresses of that region. Also, in many cases, re-logging to the same VPN server may not give the same IP address.

You may verify your IP address by using websites such as What Is My IP Address (site picked at random).

There exist free VPN services that may be enough for your problem.
See for example the article Best VPN Services for 2018.

Answer 2

You can't force an IP change; it's entirely up to your ISP. Some will hand out a new address with every router reboot, some will hold onto the same one even if you power the router off for a week.

Worst would be if your ISP uses carrier-grade NAT, which in short means that an entire group of people - a street, or even a whole town, always have the exact same external IP address. It's a similar construct to having your own internal subnet where every computer has 192.168.0.x but to the outside world, all your machines show up as 12.34.56.78

As harrymc mentioned in his answer, your 'fix' is to use a VPN service.