• truthfultemporarily@feddit.org
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    2 days ago

    I think NAT is one reason why the internet is so centralized. If everyone had a static IP you could do all sorts of decentralized cool stuff.

    • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 days ago

      Right, not the only reason, but it’s a sticking point.

      You shouldn’t need to connect to your smart thermostat by using the company’s servers as an intermediary. That makes the whole thing slower, less reliable, and a point for the company to sell your personal data (that last one being the ultimate reason why it’s done this way).

    • Creat@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 days ago

      Everyone having a static IP is a privacy nightmare.

      There’s a reason the recommendation in the standard for ipv6 had to be amended (it whatever the mechanic was) so that generated local suffixes aren’t static. Before that, we were essentially globally identifiable because just the second half of your v6 address was static.

      • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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        9 hours ago

        publicly addressable does not mean publicly routable… your router would still not arbitrarily connect untrusted external devices to internal hosts

        NAT has the property of a firewall only as an implementation detail. replacing NAT with an IPv6 firewall in the router is an upgrade in every conceivable way

        • Creat@discuss.tchncs.de
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          9 hours ago

          I’m aware of that, and didn’t say otherwise?

          My comment wasn’t even ipv6 specific, quite the opposite. The comment I was replying to also wasn’t, and the implication that things would be better if everyone had a fixed IP(v4) was actually the specific privacy nightmare scenario I wanted to emphasize. That is the literal worst case of all.

          Things can be mitigated somewhat with IPv6, but also only to a degree. Here you’d (usually) have a static prefix and not IP. You then need to use the randomized suffix generation (on a host level, or in DHCPv6 if you’re using that), and not all OS so this by default, but I think Windows does these days. Advertising data collectors, which means basically every web site, could just assume that your prefix is stable and the information they gain if they happen to be correct it’s… uncomfortable.

      • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 days ago

        IPv4 centralization creates far more privacy issues than everyone having a static IP. The solutions are still things like VPNs and onion routing.

    • PacMan@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      Which is why IPv6 was created. Everything used to get a public routable IP. Large company’s such as ATT and IBM got a whole /8 to themselves. NAT made it so we did not run out of IP’s in the 2000’s