[PaulDavisThe1st]

When @home first started figuring out how to IP-over-cable in the mid-90s, one of its early employees was incredibly excited that the promise was to offer symmetric up/down bandwidth, with the implicit goal that people could run servers at home.

The entire industry, from IP providers to software developers, dropped this as a goal very early on. Bandwidth wasn't available, server installation and management was too complex for almost everyone, security issues turned into a swamp of nightmarish proportions.

Had we been clear in, say, 1995, that goal of IP-at-home was "run your own server (appliance), it will be as easy as using the iPhone that you haven't seen yet", the state of the web would be very, very, very different.

But that turned out not to be the goal, certainly not a goal that was even remotely close to achieved, and we're stuck with what we now have, for now at least.

[jacquesm]

I see no reason why we could not bend it back that way. I have some friends that run a mid sized ISP that somehow managed to stay independent, they run fiber to the home and have a large enough customer base that it might be interesting to see if they're open to removing any blocks on symmetrical links for qualified users.

I suspect the first time one of the home IP servers is hit with a large enough denial of service attack the whole thing will be reverted but it is a neat idea, and maybe with some tweaks it could be made to work.

[LoganDark]

I've been fighting my ISP for years trying to get an upload speed that is not over TWENTY FIVE TIMES slower than my download speed. It took an FCC complaint for them to even get back to me.

[Merethbar]

The whole discussion reminds me of talks at the dinner table with my father. He was born in 1939 studied what is "IT" nowadays in Vienna, Austria, and Chicago, Illinois. He was working as the head of IT at the University in Innsbruck when the first e-mail ever was sent at the CERN. The idea of a free and decentralised Internet to connect Universities and scientists on the whole planet was the ideal that started his workoholism. First networks were up, when suddenly the marked was flooded with products from the US based on a network fitting the needs of the US military.

My father complained bitterly about the hesitation of the european experts. Cooperation was still slowed down by national "pride". "Gifts" to decision takers and the (false) impression that the US tech was ripe, safe and ready to use stalled the european ideas of an internet of free access to the knowledge of human kind, an internet of enlightenment, so to say.

The european idea was that of an indestructable public infrastructure, like a public watergrid, but to fulfil the rights on education and access to knowledge rather than water.

Financed by public funding "from everyone for everyone". With open source building blocks. Like a rail network that can be enlarged and maintained from anyone anywhere. It would have been something new, something revolutionary.

He stated that the US solution would inherit the according values: militaristic, competitive, commercialised and capitalistic. When the first shops opened online and scientific publications started to be barred behind paywalls he stated: "That is the end of what the internet could have been."

Was he right? Somehow. Would the european solution have taken a different route? Maybe not. What remained from that time? The ideas and nostalgia visible in this thread. And an active open source community including the Linux ecosystem.

It is not dead. It diversified. It mirrors our societies. If my father would have survived the pandemic I am sure he would push for the creation of a new internet from scratch. With hardware that hardwires data safety, prohibits invasion of private spaces and functions as a public infrastructure. Would there be reckless drivers? Sure. But they wouldn't dictate the rules of the road including fares and up- and download rates.

Free as in liberty, not free as in freedom.

Dear ingenieurs: It's your turn.

P.S.: This comment reflects the opinion of my father as I remember it. It is not based on journalistic research.