Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?

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On Sun, Jun 20, 2004 at 09:52:51AM -0700, Ole Jacobsen wrote:
> Much as I understand the moral outrage that NATs cause in some people's
> mind, NATs are still a reality AND they (usually anyway) provide
> connectivity to the Internet. Have you tried using a hotelroom Ethernet
> port or a WiFi network recently? I can't remember the last time I was
> assigned something that looked like a "real" routable IP address, but
> as a consumer of paid-for Internet service (that works) is there any
> reason (apart from religion) that I should care??

That's currently a consequence of the shortage of IP addresses. 
With IPv4 not every hotel or restaurant can have a Class-C address
range. Unfortunately, this shortage doesn't make people ask for
IPv6, but makes them getting used to have such NATs, and even 
more, it appears to be an advantage, because it gives kind of 
protection to unprotected windows machines. Internet is becoming 
decadent.

However, such a service might be sufficient as long as you just
poll your e-mail or visit the web from your hotel room. Would you 
be happy with it at home? What if you need an open port? 
What if you want to receive multicast packages? What if you want
to contact someone else who also has a NAT provider? What if
you want to receive instant messages, e-mail notifications,
peer-to-peer services?

With such providers Internet is not anymore what it used and was 
supposed to be. Internet means (at least in my opinion) that in 
principle every node can comunicate with every other node.

Clients behind NAT can't communicate with other such clients. 
Internet is split into clients and servers, where clients can 
communicate with servers only. No peer to peer anymore. 

Do we consider this as "internet"? 

Hadmut


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