The internet was never meant to be decentralized. It was a project researched and started by centralized entities (DOD, ARPA) that wanted to maintain command and control authority for a single person (POTUS) in the event of a physical catastrophe.
It was meant to be resilient and have multipath capability to route around damage. Having command authority sourced from multiple places was never part of the goal, and, indeed, in the client/server model that has prevailed the entire time the internet has existed, nothing about the design of the internet has been explicitly created to allow for server or data redundancy or distribution.
decentralized != distributed
Indeed, on the "modern internet" (aka the last 25+ years), everyone uses NAT, which means that end to end connectivity is not needed or wanted by most users and engineers. This idea that "every host should have a public IP, and every host should be a server as well as a client" is just fantasy that has no basis in reality, either in intent, or in practice.
IPv6 isn't a fantasy though. True, it hasn't worked out as hoped, but regardless of original intentions, IPv6 does let each client also be a host.
bossyTeacher · · focus · HN ↗
sneak · · focus · HN ↗
It was meant to be resilient and have multipath capability to route around damage. Having command authority sourced from multiple places was never part of the goal, and, indeed, in the client/server model that has prevailed the entire time the internet has existed, nothing about the design of the internet has been explicitly created to allow for server or data redundancy or distribution.
decentralized != distributed
Indeed, on the "modern internet" (aka the last 25+ years), everyone uses NAT, which means that end to end connectivity is not needed or wanted by most users and engineers. This idea that "every host should have a public IP, and every host should be a server as well as a client" is just fantasy that has no basis in reality, either in intent, or in practice.
fragmede · · focus · HN ↗