Given ipv4 exhaustion I'm not sure the pros outweigh the cons but your post just triggered some happy long forgotten memories. Manchester Uni (circa ~2001) as

Given ipv4 exhaustion I'm not sure the pros outweigh the cons but your post just triggered some happy long forgotten memories. Manchester Uni (circa ~2001) as part of JANET (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET) had unmetered, unfiltered 100Mbit ethernet ports straight into all the dorm rooms, each with a dynamic public IP on the end. A publicly routable 100MBit line back then was a big deal (the fastest connection I could get at my parents was a bonded ISDN line). It was thanks to that that I first started playing around with linux (RedHat 5 or 6 back then iirc). I remember assembling a server box with cheap PC parts, hosting an FTP (...posting the Dyn domain for it to alt.2600 and later getting in trouble after the uni received a letter from Universal :), running audiogalaxy satellite 24/7, setting up an IRC server for me and my friends to co-ordinate Quake 2 games (or counter strike - can't remember), trying (and failing) to do my own email with qmail and all sorts of other fun stuff I've forgotten. Good times.