Realistically nobody outside some devoted HN readers are going to self host their own content. At best you'd see something like netflix trying to offload their video hosting costs onto their customers.
bittorent has been around for decades and nobody used it. They emailed files to themselves instead, or used dropbox. This all happened before the ipv4 shortage and people getting moved to CGNAT.
ISPs had/have whole groups trying to stomp it out.
And it was a nightmare due to NAT even then.
It just got worse with CGNAT.
Even Linux distros push you so direct downloads now rather than pointing to trackers.
BitTorrent only has healthy usage for content that’s untenable to host legitimately.
Also, hey now - I have a lot of (actual) Linux disk images, and it works well for that!
no reason this has to be centralised.
in fact, Jitsi uses p2p with WebRTC until a third person joins the call: then migrates the call to be relayed.
A really nice latency win.
It's almost always faster than anything else available, and ipv6 would make that method of sending files closer to the default for most people.
Having VOIP in games or 1v1 lobbies is, in the strictest sense, "hosting" something in the same way.
FD: I work in video games so I speak from this bias.
Similarly, using P2P for game VOIP is a Really Bad Idea as it basically doxxes the player. Even 1v1 lobbies aren't always with people you trust enough to invite them into your house, so you shouldn't be handing them your IP address! In 99% of cases it is better to proxy it via a server instead.
Brother, if I can do something to you based on your IP address you are already totally fucked.
This whole "the thing that I use to be addressed on the internet is dangerous" myth needs to die. It's a telephone number, not a home address. You can block numbers.
P2P is not “self hosting”.
It’s video/audio conferencing working with less latency. It’s the ability to send a file directly and not via some file sharing site. It’s multiplayer gaming simplified. It’s faster software updates via BitTorrent.
Isn't self hosting, and small, private/semi-private communities the only way forwards for much of the internet? AI has made content extremely valuable, which in turn has started to destroy the openness of the web. Things are getting more and more siloed, with entry fees.
There's a world where self hosting comes back in a big way. AI ironically makes it much easier.
Someone DDoSing the $10 VPS hosting my personal website is no big deal. I don't care about it strongly enough that it must stay online, so they'll eventually get bored and move on.
Someone DDoSing my home internet connection? That's going to be a serious inconvenience - especially with WFH. No internet for a week isn't an option.
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?
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.
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.
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.
And some VPS providers already started charging extra for hosting the server on Legacy IP.