Comment by majke | Hacker News Reader

Comment by majke | Hacker News Reader

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Think about a bigger picture. Before NAT we used to have a symmetrical internet. Everyone could consume content from other servers. Everyone by definition was a server and could produce content for others.

From a philosophical point of view this is extremely important. For example email used to be properly distributed. Nowadays the internet services are concentrated. For example gmail receives a big share of all emails. Amazon gets a big share of all http traffic, and so on.

In this centralised world the "client can be a server" attitude is in practice less important. NAT's are ubiquitous. Last-mile carriers don't give static IP addresses, etc.

But still, I would be much happier if the internet was truly decentralized. Even if it's not possible to decentralize all services, the internet, the addressing scheme and infrastructure just _must_ be symmetrical. Everyone connected to the net should be able to "publish" content without the need for anyones approval or infrastructure.

IPv6 addressing scheme, the removal of NAT's, brings back the democratization of the internet.

I guess with IoT, we may see more client-to-client connections. You will want to remotely connect to your baby monitor/nanny cam, see who's ringing to your doorbell, change the temperature of your home, give an electric shock to your dog because the neighbour called to complain about the barking, etc, all that while you are away. You can do all that with a client-server architecture but a direct connection feels more natural.

I don't disagree that people could be servers much more easily in the early days.

But my mum doesn't want to be a server. And I don't really want my TV being one either.

I don't see your problem. If you don't want your TV to be a server that's accessible from the internet then don't open any ports on your router's firewall to your TV. NAT routers accidentally acted as firewalls (and newer routers also acted as proper firewalls), but that doesn't mean we're going to ditch the firewall on the router now that we have IPv6.

But you mum doesn't want to be a client either.

The question is not whether your mum wants to be a server, but whether she would like to use services that are only possible or are easier/cheaper to implement technically using a "server" on her machine/network.

People also don't "want a natural gas burner". People want that their home is warm and they prefer not having to shovel coal and they prefer the general lower costs of natural gas heating vs. electrical heating. So they end up buying natural gas heating systems. Not because they somehow like natural gas burners, but because that happens to be the technology that provides the comfort they like at a price they like.

And if you don't want your TV being a server, you most likely don't want it connected to the internet at all. It's not that it not being a server somehow prevents it spying on you or from being vulnerable to outside attackers.

Google and Amazon are not leaders in their fields because of NAT creating some sort of unbalanced playing field. That is just an incredibly fallacious argument.

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