I think the last really big hurdle to an actually democratized internet is that we need to make it easier to host at home.
Asymmetrical download upload is such a fucking pain. I would rather have 100 down and 100 up then 400 down and 5 up like I currently do.
On top of that, there aren’t a lot of good systems in place to enable me to host a website from home. If IPv6 were common it would be easy for me to secure a static IP address and to point that to my DNS resolver and attach my domain, but since I’ve got to be on an ipv4 system since no provider in my area provides an on-ramp to IPv6 and even if they did the Grand majority of Internet users cannot resolve IPv6 addresses, it’s dead in the water.
If every person in America had symmetrical upload download and a static IPv6 address for their home, we could get rid of the grand majority of the content provider and hosts and instead use democratized systems like bluesky and Kbin and Mastodon and free tube without having to worry about these multi trillion dollar companies’ bottom lines.
The asymmetrical internet speeds are intended to keep hobbyists and small businesses from self-hosting, thereby driving traffic to larger companies. I wonder if ISPs get any kind of kickback from large companies like AWS, cloudflare, or digital ocean. Like, reduced hosting costs for their websites and internal cloud services.
Takes tinfoil hat off
The reality is that it’s probably a lot cheaper for ISPs to make connections asymmetrical because it effectively lets them pump up their download speed numbers for free. However, ISPs really should give customers the option to custom allocate bandwidth. Instead of saying X upload, Y download, you get X Mbps maximum and can choose the upload/download split.
That would definitely be fair. Like even limit the ratio between tears just give me the option to have the internet that I want at my house without paying for business internet prices.
I’m not asking for symmetrical gigabit with a static ipv4 address on a fiber line with unlimited bandwidth. I just want a decent amount of bandwidth, 50-100mb up, a static IP address that is IPv6, and I’m okay with a ipv4 address that changes.
They’ve had a really long time to simply flip the switch in the routers that they use to also transmit IPv6 addresses and they are not doing it.
Their hardware is not old enough in most cases to not have IPv6 available by default in the hardware and firmware, they are just intentionally choosing not to activate it.
Are there any benefits to having a static IP, aside from self-hosting purposes? Is it somehow faster or more responsive? I’d think dynamic IPs would be better (ignoring self-hosting) because at the very least, they’d allow you to dodge (d)dos attacks (which can happen with games, people sometimes get salty enough to attack other players IPs if their IP is exposed).
Dynamic IPs were primarily a way to get around a limited pool of IP addresses. That’s all. Local IP addresses (think 192.168.x.x) were created for the same reason.
The NAT your home internet modem uses in providing your local network IP does provide a hard firewall between your computer and the internet, but that is more a side effect of the technology than anything else.
The only use or reason for having a static IP is to have a domain name that resolves to that IP and knowing that the domain register can set the IP address and it’s good until everything falls apart for lack of payment.
The other use of having a static IP is for a VPN, to remote back into your home network. Technically you can use both of these services with non-static vpns because most people’s home internet does not change their IP addresses that often and there are services called dynamic DNS resolvers that you can get to constantly update your rotating IP address to a specific domain name.
You will not see any speed increases or throughput increases from having a set ip, it just simplifies running a home domain or home network because then you don’t have to worry about ddns.
My dream for the past 3-4 years is something like a raspberry pi that you could just plug into power+internet+a chunky hard drive at home to have your own kbin/masto/lemmy/peertube instance.
I don’t know how one can bring this about, though, in a more meaningful way than yet another hackaday.io post.
I don’t know if “appliance” is how I would describe it but, yeah, something that’s as plug-and-play as possible. I guess in the sense that off the shelf, it would be as easy to use as a dishwasher or toaster.
Until I became aware of the fediverse and activitypub, I thought that any such project would be doomed to fail - like most of the smart home market, you’re tied to the manufacturer not only for compatible hardware but more crucially to talk with their servers.
Now I’m starting to think it is feasible, but still too many unknowns to bet a business on it.
I think the last really big hurdle to an actually democratized internet is that we need to make it easier to host at home.
Asymmetrical download upload is such a fucking pain. I would rather have 100 down and 100 up then 400 down and 5 up like I currently do.
On top of that, there aren’t a lot of good systems in place to enable me to host a website from home. If IPv6 were common it would be easy for me to secure a static IP address and to point that to my DNS resolver and attach my domain, but since I’ve got to be on an ipv4 system since no provider in my area provides an on-ramp to IPv6 and even if they did the Grand majority of Internet users cannot resolve IPv6 addresses, it’s dead in the water.
If every person in America had symmetrical upload download and a static IPv6 address for their home, we could get rid of the grand majority of the content provider and hosts and instead use democratized systems like bluesky and Kbin and Mastodon and free tube without having to worry about these multi trillion dollar companies’ bottom lines.
puts on tinfoil hat
The asymmetrical internet speeds are intended to keep hobbyists and small businesses from self-hosting, thereby driving traffic to larger companies. I wonder if ISPs get any kind of kickback from large companies like AWS, cloudflare, or digital ocean. Like, reduced hosting costs for their websites and internal cloud services.
Takes tinfoil hat off
The reality is that it’s probably a lot cheaper for ISPs to make connections asymmetrical because it effectively lets them pump up their download speed numbers for free. However, ISPs really should give customers the option to custom allocate bandwidth. Instead of saying X upload, Y download, you get X Mbps maximum and can choose the upload/download split.
That would definitely be fair. Like even limit the ratio between tears just give me the option to have the internet that I want at my house without paying for business internet prices.
I’m not asking for symmetrical gigabit with a static ipv4 address on a fiber line with unlimited bandwidth. I just want a decent amount of bandwidth, 50-100mb up, a static IP address that is IPv6, and I’m okay with a ipv4 address that changes.
They’ve had a really long time to simply flip the switch in the routers that they use to also transmit IPv6 addresses and they are not doing it.
Their hardware is not old enough in most cases to not have IPv6 available by default in the hardware and firmware, they are just intentionally choosing not to activate it.
Are there any benefits to having a static IP, aside from self-hosting purposes? Is it somehow faster or more responsive? I’d think dynamic IPs would be better (ignoring self-hosting) because at the very least, they’d allow you to dodge (d)dos attacks (which can happen with games, people sometimes get salty enough to attack other players IPs if their IP is exposed).
Dynamic IPs were primarily a way to get around a limited pool of IP addresses. That’s all. Local IP addresses (think 192.168.x.x) were created for the same reason.
The NAT your home internet modem uses in providing your local network IP does provide a hard firewall between your computer and the internet, but that is more a side effect of the technology than anything else.
The only use or reason for having a static IP is to have a domain name that resolves to that IP and knowing that the domain register can set the IP address and it’s good until everything falls apart for lack of payment.
The other use of having a static IP is for a VPN, to remote back into your home network. Technically you can use both of these services with non-static vpns because most people’s home internet does not change their IP addresses that often and there are services called dynamic DNS resolvers that you can get to constantly update your rotating IP address to a specific domain name.
You will not see any speed increases or throughput increases from having a set ip, it just simplifies running a home domain or home network because then you don’t have to worry about ddns.
I’ve got symmetrical gigabit and an IP address I can remember
Just because you are 1/8th immortal does not mean that you get to rub it in our faces.
My dream for the past 3-4 years is something like a raspberry pi that you could just plug into power+internet+a chunky hard drive at home to have your own kbin/masto/lemmy/peertube instance.
I don’t know how one can bring this about, though, in a more meaningful way than yet another hackaday.io post.
I feel like I have seen something like this. Just an all-in-one home server box.
I know you can make one but I get what you’re saying is that you want it to be an appliance.
I don’t know if “appliance” is how I would describe it but, yeah, something that’s as plug-and-play as possible. I guess in the sense that off the shelf, it would be as easy to use as a dishwasher or toaster.
Until I became aware of the fediverse and activitypub, I thought that any such project would be doomed to fail - like most of the smart home market, you’re tied to the manufacturer not only for compatible hardware but more crucially to talk with their servers.
Now I’m starting to think it is feasible, but still too many unknowns to bet a business on it.