this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
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ISPs seem designed to funnel people to capitalist cloud services (slrpnk.net)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by ellie@slrpnk.net to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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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?

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[–] frezik@midwest.social 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

No they fucking don't, that's not what routers do. You don't know what you're talking about.

And don't fucking tell me NAT is for security, either.

[–] Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world -2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

That literally is though? NAT stands for Network Address Translation. It'll take you public IP and translate those packets to use your internal one.

If your computer has an address that starts with 169, 168, or 10 there is a NAT somewhere in your network.

And it's a "security thing" in the same way that asking someone's name over the phone prevents impersonation haha

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It'll take you public IP and translate those packets to use your internal one.

That is NAT, yes. But that is only one small function that a router can perform, and not all routers have NAT enabled. You only need NAT if your ISP only allows you to use a single IP address.

If your computer has an address that starts with 169, 168, or 10 there is a NAT somewhere in your network.

That's not actually true. I can create such a network without connecting it to the internet, no NAT. I can create a second network, again, no NAT. I can then use a gateway router that allows any node on the first network to reach any node on the second. That router is still not doing any NAT. It's just passing traffic between two networks.

[–] Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yeah you're right, I was simplifying to the point where I was a little mistaken. I was assuming y5ou're network was connected to the Internet and was just a standard residential setup, but this is a much better explanation.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 1 points 5 days ago

was just a standard residential setup,

The distinction is important because we are discussing IPv6. A "standard residential setup" with IPv6 would provide the user with an entire subnet rather than a single IP address. We still need a router to pass traffic from the ISP's network to our own network, but we no longer need NAT.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago

Not really.

And even as a network amateur I know that its
10.0.0.0/8
172.16.0.0/12
192.168.0.0/16

and 169.254.0.0/16 is not even routable so no dice with NAT.

So someone can connect to you just with with a public IPv4 starting with 192.x.x.x

[–] frezik@midwest.social 2 points 6 days ago

Have you ever chained three Cisco 2600 routers together and then successfully ping'd clients on each end? Do you know what BGP is? OSPF? Do you know the difference between routing and routed protocols?

I know you don't, because people who do don't make the claims you're making.