6 ms·

Wow. And to think that 20 years ago I had /16 for free and did not even think to keep it. I always thought IPv6 is just around the corner.

digitalsushi 5y ago
20 years ago I was a student, testing IPv6 at the UNH-IOL and we also thought it was right around the corner. NAT has been so successful, that IPv6 is shocking to users who cannot even fathom why public traffic is being introduced to what was 'supposed' to be a private network.
- icedchai 5y ago
  Heh. A lot of folks don't remember the days before NAT, when people had public IPv4 on their desktop. I worked at a couple of ISPs and one early startup that was set up that way. No firewalls, either!
  - dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    I remember these days, and they were pretty ridiculous. One time I was playing Quake in middle school, talking some smack. Someone didn't like it and threatened to crash my computer. I didn't believe it. "Oh yeah, do it!" And they did. Got my IP from the server (the server listed users and their IPs) and bada-bing: BSOD! I was floored. I don't remember the exact Windows 95 exploit, but it was a staple for a while. It was nice when firewalls came out and you could at least have something between you and the Internet.
    - icedchai 5y ago
      Sounds like a mid-90's "ping of death."
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
        Sounds right, thank you.
    - techrat 5y ago
      Likely Winnuke, Teardrop or Land, those were the three most commonly used types of DoS exploits used against Win 3.x and Win95 users at the time.
      - dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
        Searched these and the rabbit hole was awesome. Thank you.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    Here at several Dutch universities, the WiFi still hands out public IP addresses, sometimes with a firewall, often without. At the particular university I'm at right now, every device has a publically reachable IPv4 address just as the system was originally intended. This leads to some very peculiar traffic being routed around. For example, some kind of Logitech gaming driver is broadcasting a constant of packets with someone's PC stats to my publically reachable desktop/server/laptop, because the software thinks it runs behind a trusted NAT. There's also a HUGE amount of devices you can connect to if you open the Windows network overview because everyone clicked "home network" when Windows asked them what kind of network eduroam is supposed to be. It's funny how scared people are when they realise they're not behind any strict firewall. They all know they shouldn't be disabling the firewall on their devices anyway, or so they claim, but this method of networking still instills fear into people as if NAT is a security measure (NAT slipstreaming works, NAT is not a firewall!)
    - sneak 5y ago
      NAT (standard one to many SNAT) is absolutely a firewall. You can't connect to the machines behind it from outside, which serves the exact same purpose as a default deny inbound firewall. This is a false meme right up there with "docker is not a security boundary".
      - zajio1am 5y ago
        That is not true. It is problematic in general but in some limited cases it is possible. For example, neighbors on WAN network could just send packets with dst address from your private LAN range directly to the WAN port of your router. If the router is configured as both NAT (SNAT) and firewall, it will drop such packet as not associated with any existing flow, but if it is just configured as SNAT, then such packet would be just forwarded inside unmodified.
        sneak 5y ago
        A router that accepts inbound packets with 1918 dsts on the wan port is a broken router.
  - gargs 5y ago
    Just had a memory trip to the early 00s. Anyone remember the Windows Messenger Service alerts that would randomly pop up? It was such a common thing, and the only fix was to turn off the service altogether in Windows XP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger_service
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      > Anyone remember the Windows Messenger Service alerts that would randomly pop up? The Windows Messenger Service alerts that you could make pop up with a simple command-line incantation, you mean? > It was such a common thing, and the only fix was to turn off the service altogether in Windows XP. What? Nooo, don't do that! This meant no more cool "There, almost done. Lunch in five? /CRC" messages on your colleagues' screens.
      - kalleboo 5y ago
        NET SEND * "You are broadcasting an IP address!"
- lmilcin 5y ago
  20-some years ago I was a student and an admin in a dorm that housed some 200 people. Each had their own PC and direct, symmetric 100Mbit/s access to the Internet with public IP and no filters whatsoever.
  - icedchai 5y ago
    When I went to college in the mid 90's, we had a similar setup. All public IP, no firewalls, 10 megabit ethernet jacks in each dorm room. The entire school was on a single T1, however.
icedchai 5y ago
Did your return it voluntarily, or what happened to it? I know several folks (myself included) with our own personal /24's from the 90's. Mine is routed to my home lab.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  I gave it up voluntarily. I had no need for it for a time and so I just returned it. I don't understand the idea of having arbitrarily limited amount of numbers and selling them. A lot of companies just got them for free and are now selling them for huge bucks because rather than do what I did -- return public good you are not using -- they decided to hog it until such time it becomes scarce good.
  - andai 5y ago
    People are doing something similar with housing where I live.

digitalsushi 5y ago

20 years ago I was a student, testing IPv6 at the UNH-IOL and we also thought it was right around the corner. NAT has been so successful, that IPv6 is shocking to users who cannot even fathom why public traffic is being introduced to what was 'supposed' to be a private network.

icedchai 5y ago
Heh. A lot of folks don't remember the days before NAT, when people had public IPv4 on their desktop. I worked at a couple of ISPs and one early startup that was set up that way. No firewalls, either!
- dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
  I remember these days, and they were pretty ridiculous. One time I was playing Quake in middle school, talking some smack. Someone didn't like it and threatened to crash my computer. I didn't believe it. "Oh yeah, do it!" And they did. Got my IP from the server (the server listed users and their IPs) and bada-bing: BSOD! I was floored. I don't remember the exact Windows 95 exploit, but it was a staple for a while. It was nice when firewalls came out and you could at least have something between you and the Internet.
  - icedchai 5y ago
    Sounds like a mid-90's "ping of death."
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
      Sounds right, thank you.
  - techrat 5y ago
    Likely Winnuke, Teardrop or Land, those were the three most commonly used types of DoS exploits used against Win 3.x and Win95 users at the time.
    - dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
      Searched these and the rabbit hole was awesome. Thank you.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  Here at several Dutch universities, the WiFi still hands out public IP addresses, sometimes with a firewall, often without. At the particular university I'm at right now, every device has a publically reachable IPv4 address just as the system was originally intended. This leads to some very peculiar traffic being routed around. For example, some kind of Logitech gaming driver is broadcasting a constant of packets with someone's PC stats to my publically reachable desktop/server/laptop, because the software thinks it runs behind a trusted NAT. There's also a HUGE amount of devices you can connect to if you open the Windows network overview because everyone clicked "home network" when Windows asked them what kind of network eduroam is supposed to be. It's funny how scared people are when they realise they're not behind any strict firewall. They all know they shouldn't be disabling the firewall on their devices anyway, or so they claim, but this method of networking still instills fear into people as if NAT is a security measure (NAT slipstreaming works, NAT is not a firewall!)
  - sneak 5y ago
    NAT (standard one to many SNAT) is absolutely a firewall. You can't connect to the machines behind it from outside, which serves the exact same purpose as a default deny inbound firewall. This is a false meme right up there with "docker is not a security boundary".
    - zajio1am 5y ago
      That is not true. It is problematic in general but in some limited cases it is possible. For example, neighbors on WAN network could just send packets with dst address from your private LAN range directly to the WAN port of your router. If the router is configured as both NAT (SNAT) and firewall, it will drop such packet as not associated with any existing flow, but if it is just configured as SNAT, then such packet would be just forwarded inside unmodified.
      - sneak 5y ago
        A router that accepts inbound packets with 1918 dsts on the wan port is a broken router.
- gargs 5y ago
  Just had a memory trip to the early 00s. Anyone remember the Windows Messenger Service alerts that would randomly pop up? It was such a common thing, and the only fix was to turn off the service altogether in Windows XP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger_service
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    > Anyone remember the Windows Messenger Service alerts that would randomly pop up? The Windows Messenger Service alerts that you could make pop up with a simple command-line incantation, you mean? > It was such a common thing, and the only fix was to turn off the service altogether in Windows XP. What? Nooo, don't do that! This meant no more cool "There, almost done. Lunch in five? /CRC" messages on your colleagues' screens.
    - kalleboo 5y ago
      NET SEND * "You are broadcasting an IP address!"
lmilcin 5y ago
20-some years ago I was a student and an admin in a dorm that housed some 200 people. Each had their own PC and direct, symmetric 100Mbit/s access to the Internet with public IP and no filters whatsoever.
- icedchai 5y ago
  When I went to college in the mid 90's, we had a similar setup. All public IP, no firewalls, 10 megabit ethernet jacks in each dorm room. The entire school was on a single T1, however.

icedchai 5y ago

Did your return it voluntarily, or what happened to it? I know several folks (myself included) with our own personal /24's from the 90's. Mine is routed to my home lab.

lmilcin 5y ago
I gave it up voluntarily. I had no need for it for a time and so I just returned it. I don't understand the idea of having arbitrarily limited amount of numbers and selling them. A lot of companies just got them for free and are now selling them for huge bucks because rather than do what I did -- return public good you are not using -- they decided to hog it until such time it becomes scarce good.
- andai 5y ago
  People are doing something similar with housing where I live.