NAT and CGNAT break the basic idea of how the Internet was designed, forcing everyone into servers and consumers. We've just become used to it, and most people have never experienced it any other way.
The Internet was supposed to be a purely peer-to-peer network, where the addresses on each side of a connection pointed to an end node. That's why protocols like FTP or SIP break when NAT is used, and why you have to play games with port forwarding if you want to run services from your house (assuming you have a public IP address at all).
It's slightly unrealic idea though, as most of internet users are consumers, and that's the role they really prefer. That's why Dropbox gained popularity in spite of, you know, the fact that we all can do it with FTP.
> It's slightly unrealic idea though, as most of internet users are consumers, and that's the role they really prefer.
Because just about all applications are currently architected in such a manner.
When Skype first came out many moons ago it allowed peer-to-peer connections with clients, but a lot of clients were behind NAT (especially ones that could not do PCP or UPnP), so Skype had to come up with the notion of "super nodes" that could do relaying.
Protocols like STUN/TURN/ICE/etc had to be developed to deal with all of this blocking of traffic.
If clients could know their 'real' addresses and allow things like PCP (which is often needed for (e.g.) video games), then perhaps there could me less strictly consuming and more collaborating.
We couldn't do it with FTP. That's kinda the point. We didn't have static IP addresses for every machine or the entries in DNS to go with them.
The whole idea of "consumer" and "server" nodes is so baked into how people think about networking they don't even realize it. But that's not how the Internet was intended to be in the first place.
> That's why Dropbox gained popularity in spite of, you know, the fact that we all can do it with FTP.
Dropbox gained popularity *BECAUSE IT MADE IT EASY TO DO THIS WHEN YOU'RE STUCK BEHIND NAT TRASH*. By the time it was even a thought in anyone's brain the internet had already been ruined by that garbage.
It would never have existed in a world without NAT because it wouldn't have been needed, syncing data between computers you owned that all had publicly routable addresses is a much simpler problem.
Every ISP that has CGNAT v4 without providing full v6 needs to be shut down. They are either incompetent or actively choosing to make their users' service less useful to restrict them and/or encourage "upgrades". Internet service has a public routable IP address, period.
> It's slightly unrealic idea though, as most of internet users are consumers, and that's the role they really prefer. That's why Dropbox gained popularity in spite of, you know, the fact that we all can do it with FTP.
Dropbox gained popularity because none of us can or want to bother to do it with FTP, with the exception of a very small and determined minority.
Why do you think that even FANG engineers use cloud storage systems such as Dropbox/iCloud/OneDrive/Google Drive/etc. Can't an elite software engineer put together a FTP server?
Why do you think Dropbox et al are still a thing in spite of projects such as Syncthing?
This is not the only instance where user experience and convenience show their value. Look at Docker, for example. The "aktually" crowd will be fast to say that anyone can do the same with chroot et al, but they will again be missing the whole point. It's the same thing why Microsoft tried to invest in Aspire even though Docker is here.
It's like complaining that people can buy bread when all they need to make their own is flour, water, salt, and yeast. That's completely besides the point, ain't it?
> You mean it's fixed by NAT and CGNAT. Because it's works just fine for me.
CGNAT works for you? Do you play video games at all? Because there are all sorts of people for which it doesn't.
The fact that you may be fortunate enough to get a publicly-accessible IPv4 address on your WAN interface does not mean everyone else is. This type of attitude seems to be akin to "I gots mine."
I don't play this kind of games at all, but I still can sympathize with you if it's your preferred pastime, and it doesn't work as good as you'd like. I just don't think it warrants a conclusion that those nets in which we are arguing are broken. They are tangibly, observably doing pretty well. And I find that the idea that in a shiny world of pure IPv6 central servers/nodes would decentralize themselves comes from deep misunderstanding about what "normal" humans want.
> And I find that the idea that in a shiny world of pure IPv6 central servers/nodes would decentralize themselves comes from deep misunderstanding about what "normal" humans want.
It's not about "what 'normal' humans want", it's about what can even be built.
It's currently hard to build decentralized anything now, and it'd be nice to open things up to see what creative things (if any) people could come up with if the network allowed for more peer-to-peer connections.
There are working procedures to follow in such situations, and minimally competent ISPs deal with them well enough so that most users don't even know the problem exists.
NAT and CGNAT break the basic idea of how the Internet was designed, forcing everyone into servers and consumers. We've just become used to it, and most people have never experienced it any other way.
The Internet was supposed to be a purely peer-to-peer network, where the addresses on each side of a connection pointed to an end node. That's why protocols like FTP or SIP break when NAT is used, and why you have to play games with port forwarding if you want to run services from your house (assuming you have a public IP address at all).
It's slightly unrealic idea though, as most of internet users are consumers, and that's the role they really prefer. That's why Dropbox gained popularity in spite of, you know, the fact that we all can do it with FTP.
> It's slightly unrealic idea though, as most of internet users are consumers, and that's the role they really prefer.
Because just about all applications are currently architected in such a manner.
When Skype first came out many moons ago it allowed peer-to-peer connections with clients, but a lot of clients were behind NAT (especially ones that could not do PCP or UPnP), so Skype had to come up with the notion of "super nodes" that could do relaying.
Protocols like STUN/TURN/ICE/etc had to be developed to deal with all of this blocking of traffic.
If clients could know their 'real' addresses and allow things like PCP (which is often needed for (e.g.) video games), then perhaps there could me less strictly consuming and more collaborating.
We couldn't do it with FTP. That's kinda the point. We didn't have static IP addresses for every machine or the entries in DNS to go with them.
The whole idea of "consumer" and "server" nodes is so baked into how people think about networking they don't even realize it. But that's not how the Internet was intended to be in the first place.
6 replies →
> That's why Dropbox gained popularity in spite of, you know, the fact that we all can do it with FTP.
Dropbox gained popularity *BECAUSE IT MADE IT EASY TO DO THIS WHEN YOU'RE STUCK BEHIND NAT TRASH*. By the time it was even a thought in anyone's brain the internet had already been ruined by that garbage.
It would never have existed in a world without NAT because it wouldn't have been needed, syncing data between computers you owned that all had publicly routable addresses is a much simpler problem.
Every ISP that has CGNAT v4 without providing full v6 needs to be shut down. They are either incompetent or actively choosing to make their users' service less useful to restrict them and/or encourage "upgrades". Internet service has a public routable IP address, period.
4 replies →
> It's slightly unrealic idea though, as most of internet users are consumers, and that's the role they really prefer. That's why Dropbox gained popularity in spite of, you know, the fact that we all can do it with FTP.
Dropbox gained popularity because none of us can or want to bother to do it with FTP, with the exception of a very small and determined minority.
Why do you think that even FANG engineers use cloud storage systems such as Dropbox/iCloud/OneDrive/Google Drive/etc. Can't an elite software engineer put together a FTP server?
Why do you think Dropbox et al are still a thing in spite of projects such as Syncthing?
This is not the only instance where user experience and convenience show their value. Look at Docker, for example. The "aktually" crowd will be fast to say that anyone can do the same with chroot et al, but they will again be missing the whole point. It's the same thing why Microsoft tried to invest in Aspire even though Docker is here.
It's like complaining that people can buy bread when all they need to make their own is flour, water, salt, and yeast. That's completely besides the point, ain't it?
> You mean it's fixed by NAT and CGNAT. Because it's works just fine for me.
CGNAT works for you? Do you play video games at all? Because there are all sorts of people for which it doesn't.
The fact that you may be fortunate enough to get a publicly-accessible IPv4 address on your WAN interface does not mean everyone else is. This type of attitude seems to be akin to "I gots mine."
I don't play this kind of games at all, but I still can sympathize with you if it's your preferred pastime, and it doesn't work as good as you'd like. I just don't think it warrants a conclusion that those nets in which we are arguing are broken. They are tangibly, observably doing pretty well. And I find that the idea that in a shiny world of pure IPv6 central servers/nodes would decentralize themselves comes from deep misunderstanding about what "normal" humans want.
> And I find that the idea that in a shiny world of pure IPv6 central servers/nodes would decentralize themselves comes from deep misunderstanding about what "normal" humans want.
It's not about "what 'normal' humans want", it's about what can even be built.
It's currently hard to build decentralized anything now, and it'd be nice to open things up to see what creative things (if any) people could come up with if the network allowed for more peer-to-peer connections.
Until a service's WAF catches your /32 because your ISP had previously handed it out to a spammer.
There are working procedures to follow in such situations, and minimally competent ISPs deal with them well enough so that most users don't even know the problem exists.