I've grown using dial up internet in the 90's. At the time, once you "connected" you got a real IP you could share with anyone in the world. Run a service in your machine in your desk, pass your IP to a friend and that was all you needed. Of course, there were security implications and IP are a scarce resource now, but I liked the way it was then.
IPv6, AFAIR, was promised to solve the scarcity of IP's. Every grain of sand could have a world reachable IP they promised us. What we got were CGNAT, hole punching, rendez-vous servers... If you want serve something "at home" these you'll have pay extra money for a "real IP" depending on your ISP.
The current situation is bad and, considering interests of biggest companies that can I influence it these days, not improving anytime soon.
I really miss the freedom I had in the 90's when I could run IRC server on my machine and tell my friends to connect (I actually did that!), when I could code a quick game and pass to my friends to play on-line. I see people buying security cameras and on-line switches, but what they are actually using are services which can be disabled or become paid as soon as it becomes profitable for the vendor.
We need to be independent. We should be able run services on our machines and pass that to world without any special permission if we want. The possibility of running services should not be a hostage of a few billion dollar companies or deep pockets.
The best solution I know so far for this problem is the TOR network, but it needs special software on both ends and some knowledge to use. It is time for us to start thinking about having the internet on our hands again.
It’s totally possible for many of us. I simply own a domain at Namecheap and hit their dynamic IP update endpoint to set the dns to point to my currently assigned IP. Mine only changes with router resets and such. I also forward some ports from my router to my machine’s IP and set my machine to always get the same internal IP.
I serve several websites from my home office on a little Raspberry Pi 400.
Read more about the Raspberry Pi in my Bedroom at the URL below:
> It's modeled after my nostalgia for the Renegade BBS I ran in my bedroom as a teen.
The Pi Stats Dashboard is lovely. I like how the whole display is the dashboard, with large (and retro) fonts, clear colors. I also like your pragmatic approach of using dynamic IP direct to a home server. It inspires me to build one of my own to keep track of web domains. Thanks for sharing!
> Run a service in your machine in your desk, pass your IP to a friend and that was all you needed. Of course, there were security implications and IP are a scarce resource now, but I liked the way it was then.
When I was a 1337 h4x0r as a teen I ran a port scan on the IPs from my ISP (Road Runner), and found a VNC iirc that was hosting some windows system that was a quake 2 or quake 3 server.
I saw players. I changed gravity to -100, waited, then +1000 or something like that. I was amused. They learned a lesson.
Mixed blessing though. While back I was trying to host a game (I think Terraria) . I had done it on my old ISP but not my new one. For the life of me I couldn't connect.
That's when I learned about CGNAT. At first I was kinda ticked (ended up using free tier NGrok which worked great). Now I'm kinda happy because it makes my home network rather difficult to get to from the outside which is a security feature I think I like better than the freedom.
"At the time, once you "connected" you got a real IP you could share with anyone in the world."
"What we got were CGNAT, hole punching, rendez-vous servers..."
How was the real IP shared in the 90s. Was it via search engine.
Today, one can use TOR (hidden service) to run a "rendez-vous" server. To be clear, I mean a user-controlled rendezvous server, not the rendezvous servers run by the TOR project. TOR hidden service provides a free, world-reachable IP.
The user-controlled rendezvous server is a daemon running on the user's computer. It does not need to pass traffic. It serves only as a way to share a "real IP" (and a port number).
The peer-to-peer connection can then take place outside of TOR.
IPv6, AFAIR, was promised to solve the scarcity of IP's. Every grain of sand could have a world reachable IP they promised us. What we got were CGNAT, hole punching, rendez-vous servers... If you want serve something "at home" these you'll have pay extra money for a "real IP" depending on your ISP.
The current situation is bad and, considering interests of biggest companies that can I influence it these days, not improving anytime soon.
I really miss the freedom I had in the 90's when I could run IRC server on my machine and tell my friends to connect (I actually did that!), when I could code a quick game and pass to my friends to play on-line. I see people buying security cameras and on-line switches, but what they are actually using are services which can be disabled or become paid as soon as it becomes profitable for the vendor.
We need to be independent. We should be able run services on our machines and pass that to world without any special permission if we want. The possibility of running services should not be a hostage of a few billion dollar companies or deep pockets.
The best solution I know so far for this problem is the TOR network, but it needs special software on both ends and some knowledge to use. It is time for us to start thinking about having the internet on our hands again.