[tptacek]

I can do more with the Internet today than I could with a static /22 assigned over my ISDN BRI back in the mid-1990s. A lot of things I would do back then, I would do differently today; running a chat system by connecting directly out to 6667/tcp feels pretty silly now, for instance. It's rough to build protocols that work that way today, but you're not missing much. Things were not better before the advent of presumptive NAT.

[beeflet]

p2p was simpler. The NAT epidemic has totally suffocated P2P because no one can host anything anymore.

You can't trivially host your own blog, for example, without going to your ISP and requesting a static address, and then configuring port forwarding. This is why everyone got stuck on social media, because they need someone else to run their website essentially.

[tptacek]

That's a retcon. People used Blogger because it was more convenient than setting up Apache and PHP on a webserver of their own. Linux nerds for whom doing that is no big deal are an infinitesimal fraction of everyone who blogged.

[beeflet]

why does it have to be such a big ordeal? A blog is pretty much just a static site.

Is it unimaginable that someone uses a HTML editor like microsoft word or something to write a blog and then copies it into the folder of a static web server? I'm sure it would be way simpler if people had the time to figure out P2P and the associated UI, it's not fundamentally super complicated versus client-server.

[tptacek]

Just the idea of having an always-on computer anywhere in your home excludes probably more than 80% of everyone who has ever written a blog. IPv4 is not why people use hosted services.

[tcfhgj]

> Just the idea of having an always-on computer anywhere in your home excludes probably more than 80% of everyone who has ever written a blog.

I have yet to meet someone who turns off the router at night, although I have heard of such people.

Then if you think about it, TVs, washing machines, etc. people are too lazy to turn them off, and OLED TVs even require being turned on while not being used.

[umanwizard]

He obviously meant a general-purpose PC, the type of thing you might host a blog from.

[bluGill]

What is complex is ongoing work. You have to watch for and apply security patches forever.

[uobytx2]

Well sure, I’m not trying to say that the internet is less capable generally now than in the past.

I’m suggesting that the way you build an app is shaped by the prevalence of NAT, the same way the apps you build are shaped by how much bandwidth home users have for devices.

Some types of apps benefit from p2p functionality, and those hit obstacles for normal users due to port forwarding requirements, and are largely impossible which CG. I don’t think NAT is a villain, just something that does affect what and how we build stuff.