So I was looking into getting port forwarding set up and I realized just how closed-off the internet has gotten since the early days. It’s concerning. It used to be you would buy your own router and connect it to the internet, and that router would control port-forwarding and what-have-you.

Now, your ISP provides your router, which runs their firmware, which (in my case) doesn’t even have the option to enable port forwarding.

It gets worse - because ISPs are choosing NATs over IPv6, so even if you install a custom firmware on your router without it getting blacklisted by your ISP, you still can’t expose your server to the internet because the NAT refuses to forward traffic your way. They even devise special NAT schemes like symmetric NAT to thwart hole punching.

Basically this all means that I have to purchase my web hosting separately. Or relay all the traffic through an unnecessary third party, introducing a point of failure.

It’s frustrating.

I like to control my stuff. I don’t like to depend on other people or be in a position where I have to trust someone not to fuck with my shit. Like, if the only thing outside my apartment that mattered to my website was a DNS record, I’d be really happy with that.

Edit: TIL ISPs in the US don’t have NATs

Edit 2: OMG so much advice. My knowledge about computers is SO clearly outdated, I have a lot of things to read up on.

Edit 3: There’s definitely a CGNAT involved since the WAN ip in the router config is not the same as the one I get when I use a website that echos my IP address. Far as I can tell my devices don’t get unique IPv6 addresses either. (funnily enough, if I check my IP address on my phone using roaming data, there’s no IPv6 address at all). It’s a router/modem combo, at least I think since there’s only one device in my apartment (maybe there’s a modem managing the whole complex or something?). And it doesn’t have a bridge mode, except for OTT. Might try plugging my own router into it, but it feels like a waste of time and money from what I’m seeing. Probably best to just host services over a VPN or smth.

Edit 4: Devices do get unique IPv6 addresses, but it’s moot since I can’t do anything but ping them. I guess it wouldn’t be port forwarding but something else that I would have to do that my router doesn’t support

  • kaupas24@kbin.social
    10·
    11 months ago

    I had a fun little issue a while back where my isp replaced our fiber modem to one that didn’t allow for port forwarding. The settings were missing but when I set up dmz host on that to allow our equipment to work again, I noticed it was behind some nat in their system. I found out I could call them to get functionality restored for a fee, but instead I plugged in the old box and still keep an external ip with port forwarding enabled and no nat. To be honest the old one has been a lot less stubborn as it doesn’t drop every 10th packet on the network. I switched back about 6 months ago, and I’ve not had any issues, so we’ll see when they call demanding me to plug in the new one. Their explanation for switching systems was that their old one wasn’t powerful enough for gigabit speeds, even though both have interfaces for gigabit sfp. After some testing, the old one was more capable and stable at those speeds. I assume they wanted to switch systems due to some licensing thing, or to get more money from the .5% of people who care about these features.