ISPs seem designed to funnel people to capitalist cloud services
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(Sorry if this is too off-topic:) ISPs seem designed to funnel people to capitalist cloud services, or at least I feel like that. And it endlessly frustrates me.
The reason is even though IPv6 addresses are widely available (unlike IPv4), most ISPs won't allow consumers to request a static rather than a dynamic IPv6 prefix along with a couple of IPv6 reverse DNS entries.
Instead, this functionality is gatekept behind expensive premium or even business contracts, in many cases even requiring legal paperwork proving you have a registered business, so that the common user is completely unable to self-host e.g. a fully functional IPv6-only mail server with reverse DNS, even if they wanted to.
The common workaround is to suck up to the cloud, and rent a VPS, or some other foreign controlled machine that can be easily intercepted and messed with, and where the service can be surveilled better by big money.
I'm posting this since I hope more people will realize that this is going on, and both complain to their ISPs, but most notably to regulatory bodies and to generally spread the word. If we want true digital autonomy to be more common, I feel like this needs to be fixed for consumer landline contracts.
Or did I miss something that makes this make sense outside of a big money capitalist angle?
I think you're giving their ability to coordinate too much credit. Best guess the ISPs are just withholding anything that requires investment to deploy or that they can monetize themselves. Everybody else is just bottom-feeding by selling workarounds wherever the ISPs can't or won't.
The invisible hand of the market sucks at creating optimal solutions, but it does great at creating scammy crap that will take your money, no conspiracy necessary.
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(Sorry if this is too off-topic:) ISPs seem designed to funnel people to capitalist cloud services, or at least I feel like that. And it endlessly frustrates me.
The reason is even though IPv6 addresses are widely available (unlike IPv4), most ISPs won't allow consumers to request a static rather than a dynamic IPv6 prefix along with a couple of IPv6 reverse DNS entries.
Instead, this functionality is gatekept behind expensive premium or even business contracts, in many cases even requiring legal paperwork proving you have a registered business, so that the common user is completely unable to self-host e.g. a fully functional IPv6-only mail server with reverse DNS, even if they wanted to.
The common workaround is to suck up to the cloud, and rent a VPS, or some other foreign controlled machine that can be easily intercepted and messed with, and where the service can be surveilled better by big money.
I'm posting this since I hope more people will realize that this is going on, and both complain to their ISPs, but most notably to regulatory bodies and to generally spread the word. If we want true digital autonomy to be more common, I feel like this needs to be fixed for consumer landline contracts.
Or did I miss something that makes this make sense outside of a big money capitalist angle?
Capitalist institutions push capitalism? What kind of world is this!
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If you’re looking for sympathy, you got it. Fuck the state.
If you’re looking for solutions, use a cheap $5/mo VPS that exists purely as your gateway host. Run everything you want on your home machines, then tunnel the traffic to your gateway and reverse-proxy it there. Your data stays in your hands, you can spin up and expose new services publicly in a matter of minutes, AND your home IP isn’t vulnerable to doxxing or DoS.
Is there a more detailed guide to this practice and the pros/cons?
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If you’re looking for sympathy, you got it. Fuck the state.
If you’re looking for solutions, use a cheap $5/mo VPS that exists purely as your gateway host. Run everything you want on your home machines, then tunnel the traffic to your gateway and reverse-proxy it there. Your data stays in your hands, you can spin up and expose new services publicly in a matter of minutes, AND your home IP isn’t vulnerable to doxxing or DoS.
I basically do exactly this, but I am running the reverse proxy on my home computer: the VPS is literally just acting as a proxy, for which I use wireguard to tunnel the connection. So far it's worked great, though initial setup was a pain.
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(Sorry if this is too off-topic:) ISPs seem designed to funnel people to capitalist cloud services, or at least I feel like that. And it endlessly frustrates me.
The reason is even though IPv6 addresses are widely available (unlike IPv4), most ISPs won't allow consumers to request a static rather than a dynamic IPv6 prefix along with a couple of IPv6 reverse DNS entries.
Instead, this functionality is gatekept behind expensive premium or even business contracts, in many cases even requiring legal paperwork proving you have a registered business, so that the common user is completely unable to self-host e.g. a fully functional IPv6-only mail server with reverse DNS, even if they wanted to.
The common workaround is to suck up to the cloud, and rent a VPS, or some other foreign controlled machine that can be easily intercepted and messed with, and where the service can be surveilled better by big money.
I'm posting this since I hope more people will realize that this is going on, and both complain to their ISPs, but most notably to regulatory bodies and to generally spread the word. If we want true digital autonomy to be more common, I feel like this needs to be fixed for consumer landline contracts.
Or did I miss something that makes this make sense outside of a big money capitalist angle?
-
(Sorry if this is too off-topic:) ISPs seem designed to funnel people to capitalist cloud services, or at least I feel like that. And it endlessly frustrates me.
The reason is even though IPv6 addresses are widely available (unlike IPv4), most ISPs won't allow consumers to request a static rather than a dynamic IPv6 prefix along with a couple of IPv6 reverse DNS entries.
Instead, this functionality is gatekept behind expensive premium or even business contracts, in many cases even requiring legal paperwork proving you have a registered business, so that the common user is completely unable to self-host e.g. a fully functional IPv6-only mail server with reverse DNS, even if they wanted to.
The common workaround is to suck up to the cloud, and rent a VPS, or some other foreign controlled machine that can be easily intercepted and messed with, and where the service can be surveilled better by big money.
I'm posting this since I hope more people will realize that this is going on, and both complain to their ISPs, but most notably to regulatory bodies and to generally spread the word. If we want true digital autonomy to be more common, I feel like this needs to be fixed for consumer landline contracts.
Or did I miss something that makes this make sense outside of a big money capitalist angle?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]That is basically what they do yes. ISPs are the only thing standing in between the entirety of humanity and out of the box selfhosting. With fixed IPv6 IP addresses you could build and sell devices that just self host all your stuff out of the box. You could just sell complete normie people a "cloud box" that they can slap in their home for a one time cost that will take care of all their cloud storage and smart device needs. You could integrate it into any smartphone OS ootb so that all you have to do is scan a QR code on the "cloud box" and it connects all your apps that need it to it.
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I think you're giving their ability to coordinate too much credit. Best guess the ISPs are just withholding anything that requires investment to deploy or that they can monetize themselves. Everybody else is just bottom-feeding by selling workarounds wherever the ISPs can't or won't.
The invisible hand of the market sucks at creating optimal solutions, but it does great at creating scammy crap that will take your money, no conspiracy necessary.
Yepp, Hanlon's razor: they are mostly just lazy and maybe incompetent, not necessarily evil, that's just a side effect. E.g. in my country if you call them that you want to get out of CGNAT they'll just do that for you. My IP haven't changed in years, but I don't pay for fix IP. But it may be different in each country, I have mostly good experiences with local ISPs here.
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I think there are still enough v4-only systems out there that you don't really want to host a mail server on v6. You are right though that it would be nice to be able to get static v6 (or for that matter v4) addresses from home isp's. Some do offer that of course.
Another issue can be that the average home internet user has no idea keep even a client system secure. So ISP's might use NAT and default firewall configurations partly to stop incoming connections on the theory that they are likely to be malicious. On home routers you can usually open ports if you know what you're doing. I don't know if that's even possible on mobile phones.
IP blocklisting is still very much a thing as well so you can expect any mail originating from a residential IP to be rejected due to their /24 or larger having previously sent spam, and that assumes you can send server-to-server mail (destination port 25/tcp) in the first place since many ISPs and server providers block traffic destined to that port by default to prevent users from getting their IP blocklists. My home ISP blocks outbound SNMP traffic (or at least did 10 years ago) presumably to also prevent abuse. That said, things like blocking inbound port 80/tcp and 443/tcp is purely a measure to prevent people running servers at home which I’m not a fan of.
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If you’re looking for sympathy, you got it. Fuck the state.
If you’re looking for solutions, use a cheap $5/mo VPS that exists purely as your gateway host. Run everything you want on your home machines, then tunnel the traffic to your gateway and reverse-proxy it there. Your data stays in your hands, you can spin up and expose new services publicly in a matter of minutes, AND your home IP isn’t vulnerable to doxxing or DoS.
use a cheap $5/mo VPS that exists purely as your gateway host
Now, why so expensive?
https://racknerdtracker.com/?sort=price
Disclaimer: I never used Racknerd (nor any other VPS). -
use a cheap $5/mo VPS that exists purely as your gateway host
Now, why so expensive?
https://racknerdtracker.com/?sort=price
Disclaimer: I never used Racknerd (nor any other VPS).I've used them for years with literally zero issues. Performance a for a cheap VPS. And since all the real work happens on my machines, if they enshittify, I can easily move elsewhere.
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(Sorry if this is too off-topic:) ISPs seem designed to funnel people to capitalist cloud services, or at least I feel like that. And it endlessly frustrates me.
The reason is even though IPv6 addresses are widely available (unlike IPv4), most ISPs won't allow consumers to request a static rather than a dynamic IPv6 prefix along with a couple of IPv6 reverse DNS entries.
Instead, this functionality is gatekept behind expensive premium or even business contracts, in many cases even requiring legal paperwork proving you have a registered business, so that the common user is completely unable to self-host e.g. a fully functional IPv6-only mail server with reverse DNS, even if they wanted to.
The common workaround is to suck up to the cloud, and rent a VPS, or some other foreign controlled machine that can be easily intercepted and messed with, and where the service can be surveilled better by big money.
I'm posting this since I hope more people will realize that this is going on, and both complain to their ISPs, but most notably to regulatory bodies and to generally spread the word. If we want true digital autonomy to be more common, I feel like this needs to be fixed for consumer landline contracts.
Or did I miss something that makes this make sense outside of a big money capitalist angle?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]My ISP is a local deal, well-known for protecting privacy, and run by an absolute nerd (in the best way possible, also outspoken about privacy, FOSS, and other such things). Their customer service is second-to-none; I had an issue with my static IP a couple years back, and had an actual engineer on the line within a few hours. On a weekend.
It's XMission. I dropped Comcast for them once they were in my area. Comcast can climb up a cactus.
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I basically do exactly this, but I am running the reverse proxy on my home computer: the VPS is literally just acting as a proxy, for which I use wireguard to tunnel the connection. So far it's worked great, though initial setup was a pain.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]This is a great suggestion!
Lest anyone miss the buried lede, this approach means that traffic is pre-encrypted as it passes through the gateway VPS - so even if your VPS gets hacked, it’s way harder to steal credentials and break into the services running on your home network.
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(Sorry if this is too off-topic:) ISPs seem designed to funnel people to capitalist cloud services, or at least I feel like that. And it endlessly frustrates me.
The reason is even though IPv6 addresses are widely available (unlike IPv4), most ISPs won't allow consumers to request a static rather than a dynamic IPv6 prefix along with a couple of IPv6 reverse DNS entries.
Instead, this functionality is gatekept behind expensive premium or even business contracts, in many cases even requiring legal paperwork proving you have a registered business, so that the common user is completely unable to self-host e.g. a fully functional IPv6-only mail server with reverse DNS, even if they wanted to.
The common workaround is to suck up to the cloud, and rent a VPS, or some other foreign controlled machine that can be easily intercepted and messed with, and where the service can be surveilled better by big money.
I'm posting this since I hope more people will realize that this is going on, and both complain to their ISPs, but most notably to regulatory bodies and to generally spread the word. If we want true digital autonomy to be more common, I feel like this needs to be fixed for consumer landline contracts.
Or did I miss something that makes this make sense outside of a big money capitalist angle?
This is a huge problem. We need to start our own ISPS. Municipal owned or alongside a microgrid co-op are good options
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(Sorry if this is too off-topic:) ISPs seem designed to funnel people to capitalist cloud services, or at least I feel like that. And it endlessly frustrates me.
The reason is even though IPv6 addresses are widely available (unlike IPv4), most ISPs won't allow consumers to request a static rather than a dynamic IPv6 prefix along with a couple of IPv6 reverse DNS entries.
Instead, this functionality is gatekept behind expensive premium or even business contracts, in many cases even requiring legal paperwork proving you have a registered business, so that the common user is completely unable to self-host e.g. a fully functional IPv6-only mail server with reverse DNS, even if they wanted to.
The common workaround is to suck up to the cloud, and rent a VPS, or some other foreign controlled machine that can be easily intercepted and messed with, and where the service can be surveilled better by big money.
I'm posting this since I hope more people will realize that this is going on, and both complain to their ISPs, but most notably to regulatory bodies and to generally spread the word. If we want true digital autonomy to be more common, I feel like this needs to be fixed for consumer landline contracts.
Or did I miss something that makes this make sense outside of a big money capitalist angle?
The big issue is that your network provider is also the physical provider, and there's no real competition as a result.
When most people got their Internet service over telephone lines, your ISP didn't need to also own the telephone lines, they just needed some telephone numbers.
When the telcos themselves got into the business of providing internet access, they pushed out the competition.
The 1996 Telecommunications Act, written by a Republican Congress, and signed into law by a Democratic president (Clinton) is largely responsible for the current state of affairs.
The "Information Superhighway" is a toll road, built by taxes, but owned by private corporations.
What's crazy is that the government paid these corporations to build this infrastructure.
When your government pays, say, a road building company to build roads, one doesn't then grant the ownership of those roads to that company.
But that is EXACTLY what we did with our communications infrastructure.
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IP blocklisting is still very much a thing as well so you can expect any mail originating from a residential IP to be rejected due to their /24 or larger having previously sent spam, and that assumes you can send server-to-server mail (destination port 25/tcp) in the first place since many ISPs and server providers block traffic destined to that port by default to prevent users from getting their IP blocklists. My home ISP blocks outbound SNMP traffic (or at least did 10 years ago) presumably to also prevent abuse. That said, things like blocking inbound port 80/tcp and 443/tcp is purely a measure to prevent people running servers at home which I’m not a fan of.
Yes, that too. I hadn't even thought about trying to send email from a home ISP. Everyone knows you basically can't. I thought the idea was to receive email rather than send it, so you wouldn't be relying on some bigtech company to store it for you.
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I wonder how often the assigned prefix changes with most of the regular ISPs. I'd have to look someone else's router since I'm still stuck on an old contract. But I believe what I saw with some of the regular consumer contracts: the prefixes stay the same for a long time. You could just slap a free DynDNS service on top and be done with it.
But yes, I think this used to be the promise... We'd all get IPv6 and a lot of gadgets like NAS systems, video cameras and a wifi kettle and they'd be accessible from outside. Instead of that we use big capitalist cloud services and all the data from the internet of things devices has some stopover in the China cloud.
My ISP seems to use just normal DHCP for assigning addresses and honors re-use requests. The only times my IP addresses have changed has been I've changed the MAC or UUID that connects. I've been off-line for a week, come back, and been given the same address. Both IPv4 and v6.
If one really wants their home systems to be publicly accessible, it's easy enough to get a cheap vanity domain and point it at whatever address. rDNS won't work, which would probably interfere with email, but most services don't really need it. It's a bit more complicated to detect when your IP changes and script a DNS update, but certainly do-able, if (like OP) one is hell bent on avoiding any off-site hardware.
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My ISP is a local deal, well-known for protecting privacy, and run by an absolute nerd (in the best way possible, also outspoken about privacy, FOSS, and other such things). Their customer service is second-to-none; I had an issue with my static IP a couple years back, and had an actual engineer on the line within a few hours. On a weekend.
It's XMission. I dropped Comcast for them once they were in my area. Comcast can climb up a cactus.
I’m jealous. Xmission is all around me but not in my area. Luckily I have another local ISP (and not Comcast) but they want $10 a month for a static IP.
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(Sorry if this is too off-topic:) ISPs seem designed to funnel people to capitalist cloud services, or at least I feel like that. And it endlessly frustrates me.
The reason is even though IPv6 addresses are widely available (unlike IPv4), most ISPs won't allow consumers to request a static rather than a dynamic IPv6 prefix along with a couple of IPv6 reverse DNS entries.
Instead, this functionality is gatekept behind expensive premium or even business contracts, in many cases even requiring legal paperwork proving you have a registered business, so that the common user is completely unable to self-host e.g. a fully functional IPv6-only mail server with reverse DNS, even if they wanted to.
The common workaround is to suck up to the cloud, and rent a VPS, or some other foreign controlled machine that can be easily intercepted and messed with, and where the service can be surveilled better by big money.
I'm posting this since I hope more people will realize that this is going on, and both complain to their ISPs, but most notably to regulatory bodies and to generally spread the word. If we want true digital autonomy to be more common, I feel like this needs to be fixed for consumer landline contracts.
Or did I miss something that makes this make sense outside of a big money capitalist angle?
Starlink gives me an ipv6 its not static as such but a dynamic DNS can solve that issue. My ISP issue is that my mobile provider doesn't give me an ipv6 at all so I can't route to my home server without a gateway to proxy.
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My ISP is a local deal, well-known for protecting privacy, and run by an absolute nerd (in the best way possible, also outspoken about privacy, FOSS, and other such things). Their customer service is second-to-none; I had an issue with my static IP a couple years back, and had an actual engineer on the line within a few hours. On a weekend.
It's XMission. I dropped Comcast for them once they were in my area. Comcast can climb up a cactus.
Pete Ashdown's a badass. Big up XMission.
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(Sorry if this is too off-topic:) ISPs seem designed to funnel people to capitalist cloud services, or at least I feel like that. And it endlessly frustrates me.
The reason is even though IPv6 addresses are widely available (unlike IPv4), most ISPs won't allow consumers to request a static rather than a dynamic IPv6 prefix along with a couple of IPv6 reverse DNS entries.
Instead, this functionality is gatekept behind expensive premium or even business contracts, in many cases even requiring legal paperwork proving you have a registered business, so that the common user is completely unable to self-host e.g. a fully functional IPv6-only mail server with reverse DNS, even if they wanted to.
The common workaround is to suck up to the cloud, and rent a VPS, or some other foreign controlled machine that can be easily intercepted and messed with, and where the service can be surveilled better by big money.
I'm posting this since I hope more people will realize that this is going on, and both complain to their ISPs, but most notably to regulatory bodies and to generally spread the word. If we want true digital autonomy to be more common, I feel like this needs to be fixed for consumer landline contracts.
Or did I miss something that makes this make sense outside of a big money capitalist angle?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Asymmetric bandwidth is literally designed to ensure you remain a consumer and is actively inhibiting the collaborative, communal web utopia we were told was going to be the future.
