Comment by wolrah
13 hours ago
> 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.
Only today we would have put everything behind something like NAT anyway because your devices would be getting hacked constantly.
>it would never have existed in a world without NAT because it wouldn't have been needed,
I'm sorry, but this claim is one of the brightest examples of false consenses effect I've seen in ages. People generally just prefer an icon on desktop to click/tap. And that's the reason Dropbox found its audience.
Now imagine if you didn't need that icon and Windows Explorer (or whatever file manager you use) could just connect to wherever your file is. Maybe through a "Favorite."
Then imagine the security implications of trusting windows to serve just some selected files over FTP and never have any security hole that exposed other files or allowed RCE