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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Overall everyone will use less data when there’s a data cap, I found.

    My ISP implemented data caps back then too (thankfully it’s all removed now, but 60GB was really bonkers!) and I just find it fascinating how much traffic I generate nowadays, when I don’t have to care how much data I have left this month.

    Anyways, data caps shouldn’t be relevant anymore in 2023 when absolutely everything can handle gigabits and more. It’s interesting how American ISPs still implement them.


  • I sorta understand why data caps were implemented in the past. Some people hosted servers on their home connection, and their total internet traffic in a week would far exceed that of a normal user’s. Data caps were meant to force people to be conservative on their internet usage so this would not happen.

    But come on now, it’s 2023. If your internet infrastructure could not handle that amount of traffic, you are a laughing stock of ISPs.





  • Right. Packets still have to go through your router, assuming that your router has firewall turned on, it goes like this:

    1. Your router receives a packet.

    2. It checks whether the packet is “expected” (a “related” packet) - by using connection tracking.

      For example, if ComputerA had sent something to ServerX before, and now the packet received by router says “from ServerX to ComputerA”, then the packet is let through - surely, this packet is just a reply to ComputerA’s previous requests.

    3. If step 2 fails - we know this is a new incoming packet. Possibly it comes from an attacker, which we don’t want. And so the router checks whether there is a rule that allows such a packet to go through (the assumption is that since you are explicitly allowing it, you know how to secure yourself.)

      If I have setup a firewall rule that says “allow packets if their destination is ComputerB, TCP port 25565”, and the received packet matches this description, the router lets it through.

    4. Finally, the packets that the router accepts from the previous steps are forwarded to the relevant LAN hosts.


  • IP addressing is just a way to give a globally unique number to each device. It’s just a number.

    And there wasn’t a real public/private distinction when the Internet was still in its infancy. Printers were indeed given “public” addresses because people needed a number for it.

    If you don’t want your printer to be reachable by the public Internet, use a firewall to block outside connections. If you can use NAT, you certainly can use a firewall. Heck, they are almost the same thing if you have been using the Linux kernel (iptables/nftables handle firewalling and masquerading with the same tool!)

    Routability is not the same as reachability. With NAT transversal you can reach my “private” hosts all the same, although you can’t route to me because I don’t have a public address.


  • Port forwarding is exclusively a NAT phenomenon.

    In IPv6 every device should in theory have a public address - just like how every computer had a public IPv4 address back in the 1980s ~ 1990s.

    However, most sensible routers will have a firewall setup by default that blocks all incoming connections for security reasons. You still need to add firewall rules.



  • Living in the APNIC region, we are kinda notorious for being the first region to run out of IPv4 addresses.

    The top 3 mobile ISPs in my country here have been doing CGNAT since at least 2014. Cable ISPs are limiting public IPv4 according to plans since at least 2017, i.e. if the download speed of your plan is below 200Mbps , you get CGNATed.

    We are severely out of IPv4 addresses.


  • orangeboats@lemmy.worldtoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldIs moving to IPv6 worth it?
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    1 year ago

    It’s not necessary to firewall every device. Just like how your router can handle NAT, it should be able to handle stateful firewall too.

    Mine blocks all incoming connections by default. I can add (IP, port range) entries to the whitelist if I need to host a service, it’s not really different to NAT port forwarding rules.