[throw0101a]

> Realistically nobody outside some devoted HN readers are going to self host their own content.

How about Xbox/PS multiplayer/P2P gaming? Hosting a Minecraft server?

When Skype first came out it was P2P, but had to come up with the "supernode" concept (basically STUN/TURN/ICE) because of NAT: now all of our communication methods basically have to phone into the mothership.

Do we want the Internet to be more centralized (possibly given more power to the tech bros) or more decentralized?

[crote]

Would you give your personal phone number to random strangers on the internet, or even publish it on a website? Probably not, due to the possibility of harassment, right? IP addresses aren't any different, which immediately kills a huge portion of the game server self-hosting.

A hosted and managed Minecraft server is available for less than the cost of a cup of coffee per month. At that price point it makes very little sense to deal with the hassle of having to run your own home server. Even if you want to geek out and manage it yourself, a VPS is a very attractive option.

And for the handful of people that remain and really want to homelab a Minecraft server for their friends but are stuck behind CGNAT, there's always software like Hamach - which solved the gaming NAT problem back in 2004.

So no, self hosting isn't a problem which needs IPv6 to solve it.

[ivlad]

> Would you give your personal phone number to random strangers on the internet, or even publish it on a website? Probably not, due to the possibility of harassment, right? IP addresses aren't any different

1. The claim that IP addresses aren’t different from the phone numbers requires proof

2. Until very recently, just before the Covid pandemic people regularly exchanged physical business cards with their mobile phone numbers. So, yes, people do that.

[TuxPowered]

> Even if you want to geek out and manage it yourself, a VPS is a very attractive option.

And some VPS providers already started charging extra for hosting the server on Legacy IP.

[throw0101a]

> Would you give your personal phone number to random strangers on the internet, or even publish it on a website? Probably not, due to the possibility of harassment, right? IP addresses aren't any different, which immediately kills a huge portion of the game server self-hosting.

You talk of a singular number in this analogy, but that is completely non-sensical in the IPv6 context: even brain dead ISPs assign /64s to residential connections, so you could give random strangers a random IPv6 address that's valid for a few hours and then you remove it from service.

Want to provide a service? Generate a new address, assign it to the server, publish it to whomever you wish. When you're done remove the ip addr alias. Give each rando their own IPv6 address for the service that's only live for a finite amount of time.

In fact you could generate a new IPv6 address each second in your assigned /64 and you wouldn't run out for 584,942,417,355 years.