6 ms·

> There’s lots of things you can blame for killing the open Internet, but I think NAT was one of the earliest. Running a server used to be trivial: run an execu

by solatic 1mo ago

> There’s lots of things you can blame for killing the open Internet, but I think NAT was one of the earliest. Running a server used to be trivial: run an executable, tell people your address, done... It also trained everyone to think client‐server is natural. “My device talks to The Cloud which talks to other devices” feels normal, when that feeling originated as an artifact of address scarcity. A lot of this feels like a requiem for the days when the only people on the Internet were "high-computer-skill" type folks. Most people will gravitate to "user-friendly" solutions: Gmail and other managed email providers were popular because they didn't stop working when you shut down your computer to save electricity, when your server's hard drive crashed, when you upgraded your computer to something with a faster processor, more RAM, and a newer operating system. It was hard enough to educate laypeople about URLs and email addresses (AOL keywords, anyone?), let alone a combination of random numbers in an IP address, or convincing people to register domain names. Yes, NAT shoved fences into a network that was all about connecting everybody. But we'd still end up with server-client cloud architectures, even if we had started with IPv6 in the beginning. ISPs would have just sold highly restrictive firewalls as part of their home-install basic boxes, and we'd still have ended up with those fences.

warkdarrior 1mo ago
> Running a server used to be trivial: run an executable, tell people your address, done... This works, until you have more than one person accessing your server. Then you need to worry about accounts, credentials, data isolation, etc. And then if a couple of people connect to your server and start using it, you have to worry about staying online, staying updated, backing up the data. But other than that... yes, trivial. And just to be really explicit, you always have more than one person accessing your server, and most of the time they are unwanted users trying to break in.
- mxkdjdjdb 1mo ago
  I mean, no, you don't have to worry about all that stuff unless the business logic demands it. The OP is entirely correct for eg just serving a static file.
- pdonis 1mo ago
  > most of the time they are unwanted users trying to break in. Exactly. Of all the reasons why the average person doesn't have an Internet-visible server, NAT, I would say, is pretty far down on the list.
  - mohaine 1mo ago
    1. NAT and a firewall are 2 different things 2. With IPV6 you can have so many IPS that unwanted users can't guess your IP. This isn't true security but see 1 for that.
    - throw0101a 1mo ago
      > 2. With IPV6 you can have so many IPS that unwanted users can't guess your IP. In fact you could have an IPv6 address for each user, and if one starts becoming troublesome both revoke account and stop using that address. You could create a new IPv6 address every millisecond, and it'd take 584,868,233 years to exhaust a IPv6 subnet (/64).
      - pdonis 1mo ago
        Perhaps a server run by a large corporation could do this. Perhaps. But an ordinary person? I don't see it. If it's tough for an ordinary person to handle safely opening a port in their firewall for forwarding, it's tough squared (or perhaps cubed or an even higher power) for an ordinary person to handle auto-creating a separate IPV6 address for every other person that wants to communicate over the Internet with them. Not to mention, how does this work with DNS? If Ordinary Person wants to put an article up for others to read, how do the others find it? Surely not by Ordinary Person sending individually crafted IPV6 addresses to anyone who wants to read their article. (And how do they even find those other people if they are also creating new IPV6 addresses for everyone else?)
        deleted 1mo ago
        [deleted]
    - 1mo ago
- ssl-3 1mo ago
  If the utility and functionality of the server requires those things, then they're required regardless of whether or not that server is internet-facing. Jill from Elbonia may be always be a threat, but this doesn't mean that Joe from Accounting is not a threat or cannot ever provide a vector for Jill. :)
- matheusmoreira 1mo ago
  > most of the time they are unwanted users trying to break in Thankfully, we have wireguard now. It drops all packets by default. From the perspective of people who don't have the requisite cryptographic keys, it's like the computer is not even there to begin with. I've always found it strange how people just put computers out there on the internet and just allow them to interact with total internet randoms. Why are we allowing our computers to talk to strangers? No wonder people are getting hacked.
robinpie 1mo ago
> A lot of this feels like a requiem for the days when the only people on the Internet were "high-computer-skill" type folks. FWIW I (writer of blog post) am 21 years old and just a bitch lol
- DanHulton 1mo ago
  Not saying this is what’s going on, but you can ABSOLUTELY have nostalgia for a time that wasn’t your own, too.
  - robinpie 1mo ago
    Oh yeah absolutely
  - jimmygrapes 1mo ago
    I suppose I could ask elsewhere but do you (or does anyone else) have a word/term for this?
    - tech2 1mo ago
      Anemoia is the term, I believe, and an almost perfect fit (nostalgia for a time you have never experienced)
- jasonfarnon 1mo ago
  That's fine. Based on my recollection I don't agree with your thesis (or think it's at least greatly exaggerated) but reading source documents from the past and advancing an argument is solid history scholarship.
- trevithick 1mo ago
  But you are a "high-computer-skill" person. Also, the lazy sysadmin forgot to set a quote for today.
kmeisthax 1mo ago
There was a point in time in the mid-2000s when P2P networking had briefly made running your own server attractive to end-users again. And then the iPhone came out and completely killed any hope of that becoming the norm. The thing about smartphones is that they are both completely dependent on wireless connections to central servers in order to function and completely unsuitable to operate as servers. If you forced your phone to serve files anyway, your battery would drain quickly and the CPU would be drowning in its own waste heat. You might argue that you could still do non-server things on the phone, but practically speaking, a node that can't handle server tasks is just a leech. P2P networks work on a mutual aid basis; they require the majority of nodes be capable of shouldering traffic or sharing files in order to be a net benefit. If you add, say, tens of millions of new mobile phones to the network, the network will become unusable as any desktop machine gets DDoSed by hordes of phones asking for a babysitter. So even in the world where IPv6 did to v4 what v4 did to NCP, we'd still ultimately end up with "my files go in the cloud", because clouds are coinventions of smartphones, in the same way that cars are coinventions of suburbs. You can't have one without the other, and once you do have both, they become so economically dominant that others get socially coerced into using them.
- ndiddy 1mo ago
  Nokia were experimenting with using their smartphones as web servers in the mid-2000s. You were able to write blog posts and share photos, and if you logged in to the site you could look up your contacts or download your camera roll. There's an article on this here: https://allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/Previewing_Nokias_Mobile_Web_Server.php https://allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/Previewing_Nokias_... . Obviously it's all very basic, but with a few years of development and polish (and probably someone besides Nokia copying the idea) I think this would be a compelling product. You could basically have the same feature set as something like iCloud but without the subscription or your files going elsewhere.
  - PhotoCore 18d ago
    [dead]
throw0101a 1mo ago
> But we'd still end up with server-client cloud architectures, even if we had started with IPv6 in the beginning. Skype was originally peer-to-peer for comms, but ended up with "super-nodes" because of NAT limitations (not sure if STUN/TURN/ICE had been invented by that point). BitTorrent is still peer-to-peer. A number of folks ran Mincecraft servers at home, but you'd only be able to have one on the default port. But this doesn't only hurt server-y stuff: you may not notice it if you're with a legacy MegaISP with lots of money to throw at IPv4 allocations, but if you're with a younger or smaller ISP, then there's a good chance you're behind CG-NAT, so many console games won't work.
- ndiddy 1mo ago
  Yeah I feel like a lot of the people criticizing this are still being client-server brained. There's a lot of use cases that "everyone is a server" would open up without turning everyone into a sysadmin and they'd likely get turned into user-friendly software like BitTorrent or Skype or early Spotify.
  - throw0101a 1mo ago
    "Client-server" thinking may in general be a 'hobbled' way of thinking of things.
    - mort96 1mo ago
      It's sadly the only practical way to do things now. For client/server, you only need one party (the server) to not be behind CGNAT. For p2p, you need both parties to not be behind CGNAT. It's typically only possible to guarantee that one party isn't behind CGNAT. All practical solutions for p2p these days require NAT hole punching through STUN and signaling servers anyway, so even p2p has to be bootstrapped via client/server. Easier to just keep the protocol client/server then.
      - pfa87 1mo ago
        [dead]

by solatic 1mo ago

warkdarrior 1mo ago

> Running a server used to be trivial: run an executable, tell people your address, done... This works, until you have more than one person accessing your server. Then you need to worry about accounts, credentials, data isolation, etc. And then if a couple of people connect to your server and start using it, you have to worry about staying online, staying updated, backing up the data. But other than that... yes, trivial. And just to be really explicit, you always have more than one person accessing your server, and most of the time they are unwanted users trying to break in.

mxkdjdjdb 1mo ago
I mean, no, you don't have to worry about all that stuff unless the business logic demands it. The OP is entirely correct for eg just serving a static file.
pdonis 1mo ago
> most of the time they are unwanted users trying to break in. Exactly. Of all the reasons why the average person doesn't have an Internet-visible server, NAT, I would say, is pretty far down on the list.
- mohaine 1mo ago
  1. NAT and a firewall are 2 different things 2. With IPV6 you can have so many IPS that unwanted users can't guess your IP. This isn't true security but see 1 for that.
  - throw0101a 1mo ago
    > 2. With IPV6 you can have so many IPS that unwanted users can't guess your IP. In fact you could have an IPv6 address for each user, and if one starts becoming troublesome both revoke account and stop using that address. You could create a new IPv6 address every millisecond, and it'd take 584,868,233 years to exhaust a IPv6 subnet (/64).
    - pdonis 1mo ago
      Perhaps a server run by a large corporation could do this. Perhaps. But an ordinary person? I don't see it. If it's tough for an ordinary person to handle safely opening a port in their firewall for forwarding, it's tough squared (or perhaps cubed or an even higher power) for an ordinary person to handle auto-creating a separate IPV6 address for every other person that wants to communicate over the Internet with them. Not to mention, how does this work with DNS? If Ordinary Person wants to put an article up for others to read, how do the others find it? Surely not by Ordinary Person sending individually crafted IPV6 addresses to anyone who wants to read their article. (And how do they even find those other people if they are also creating new IPV6 addresses for everyone else?)
      - deleted 1mo ago
        [deleted]
  - 1mo ago
ssl-3 1mo ago
If the utility and functionality of the server requires those things, then they're required regardless of whether or not that server is internet-facing. Jill from Elbonia may be always be a threat, but this doesn't mean that Joe from Accounting is not a threat or cannot ever provide a vector for Jill. :)
matheusmoreira 1mo ago
> most of the time they are unwanted users trying to break in Thankfully, we have wireguard now. It drops all packets by default. From the perspective of people who don't have the requisite cryptographic keys, it's like the computer is not even there to begin with. I've always found it strange how people just put computers out there on the internet and just allow them to interact with total internet randoms. Why are we allowing our computers to talk to strangers? No wonder people are getting hacked.

robinpie 1mo ago

> A lot of this feels like a requiem for the days when the only people on the Internet were "high-computer-skill" type folks. FWIW I (writer of blog post) am 21 years old and just a bitch lol

DanHulton 1mo ago
Not saying this is what’s going on, but you can ABSOLUTELY have nostalgia for a time that wasn’t your own, too.
- robinpie 1mo ago
  Oh yeah absolutely
- jimmygrapes 1mo ago
  I suppose I could ask elsewhere but do you (or does anyone else) have a word/term for this?
  - tech2 1mo ago
    Anemoia is the term, I believe, and an almost perfect fit (nostalgia for a time you have never experienced)
jasonfarnon 1mo ago
That's fine. Based on my recollection I don't agree with your thesis (or think it's at least greatly exaggerated) but reading source documents from the past and advancing an argument is solid history scholarship.
trevithick 1mo ago
But you are a "high-computer-skill" person. Also, the lazy sysadmin forgot to set a quote for today.

kmeisthax 1mo ago

There was a point in time in the mid-2000s when P2P networking had briefly made running your own server attractive to end-users again. And then the iPhone came out and completely killed any hope of that becoming the norm. The thing about smartphones is that they are both completely dependent on wireless connections to central servers in order to function and completely unsuitable to operate as servers. If you forced your phone to serve files anyway, your battery would drain quickly and the CPU would be drowning in its own waste heat. You might argue that you could still do non-server things on the phone, but practically speaking, a node that can't handle server tasks is just a leech. P2P networks work on a mutual aid basis; they require the majority of nodes be capable of shouldering traffic or sharing files in order to be a net benefit. If you add, say, tens of millions of new mobile phones to the network, the network will become unusable as any desktop machine gets DDoSed by hordes of phones asking for a babysitter. So even in the world where IPv6 did to v4 what v4 did to NCP, we'd still ultimately end up with "my files go in the cloud", because clouds are coinventions of smartphones, in the same way that cars are coinventions of suburbs. You can't have one without the other, and once you do have both, they become so economically dominant that others get socially coerced into using them.

ndiddy 1mo ago
Nokia were experimenting with using their smartphones as web servers in the mid-2000s. You were able to write blog posts and share photos, and if you logged in to the site you could look up your contacts or download your camera roll. There's an article on this here: https://allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/Previewing_Nokias_Mobile_Web_Server.php https://allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/Previewing_Nokias_... . Obviously it's all very basic, but with a few years of development and polish (and probably someone besides Nokia copying the idea) I think this would be a compelling product. You could basically have the same feature set as something like iCloud but without the subscription or your files going elsewhere.
- PhotoCore 18d ago
  [dead]

throw0101a 1mo ago

> But we'd still end up with server-client cloud architectures, even if we had started with IPv6 in the beginning. Skype was originally peer-to-peer for comms, but ended up with "super-nodes" because of NAT limitations (not sure if STUN/TURN/ICE had been invented by that point). BitTorrent is still peer-to-peer. A number of folks ran Mincecraft servers at home, but you'd only be able to have one on the default port. But this doesn't only hurt server-y stuff: you may not notice it if you're with a legacy MegaISP with lots of money to throw at IPv4 allocations, but if you're with a younger or smaller ISP, then there's a good chance you're behind CG-NAT, so many console games won't work.

ndiddy 1mo ago
Yeah I feel like a lot of the people criticizing this are still being client-server brained. There's a lot of use cases that "everyone is a server" would open up without turning everyone into a sysadmin and they'd likely get turned into user-friendly software like BitTorrent or Skype or early Spotify.
- throw0101a 1mo ago
  "Client-server" thinking may in general be a 'hobbled' way of thinking of things.
  - mort96 1mo ago
    It's sadly the only practical way to do things now. For client/server, you only need one party (the server) to not be behind CGNAT. For p2p, you need both parties to not be behind CGNAT. It's typically only possible to guarantee that one party isn't behind CGNAT. All practical solutions for p2p these days require NAT hole punching through STUN and signaling servers anyway, so even p2p has to be bootstrapped via client/server. Easier to just keep the protocol client/server then.
    - pfa87 1mo ago
      [dead]