Ending the Internet’s Trench Warfare

nytimes.com

6 points·thafman··5 comments

This is all great and stuff, but will I still be able to run my own web server, SMTP server and SSH server out of my basement? I regard this as imperative, and I've decided not to move to a faster service that filtered ports 22, 25, 80 and maybe others.

Without the ability to actually participate in the ground-state Internet, all the speed in the world will not help us innovate.

Great point. In other words, there are things about internet service that are more important than the bandwidth between your home and Hulu or the latency between your home and your Quake opponents.

Well, yes. I didn't even think of Hulu, as I haven't ever used it. And I don't play Quake. Not much of an on-line gamer, I guess. But I did read my access_log file today to see what kind of crazy stuff showed up over the weekend.

Aside: this is why I always purchase the "business" plan. It's usually $20-$30 more per month than the equivalent residential, but that's a small price to pay to have to remove the ISP's draconian rules.

I've wondered but haven't investigated in detail (no need, yet). If it would lift/increase "bandwidth" caps and incent higher reliability, I'd find that a worthwhile option. I wonder how widely available such plans are and why they don't receive more attention.

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