Alcun Atirutan BBS

In a way, upstream throttling on ISPs has turned us all into centralized data consumers when we should have all been running servers from our own homes

Remember the BBS era where anyone with a modem and phone line could run an online service? Maybe we don’t have that now because of ISPs

@benjedwards I thought that was an artifact of cable never being intended for symmetrical communication, and we only have any significant upstream thanks to a series of brilliant hacks over decades. But the big scandal is, regulatory capture means we didn't entirely replace cable and phone lines with fiber nationwide by the mid-'00s

@benjedwards I partly learned computers because I could run a home server at home for friends. I feel like some ways into tech are blocked because of this

@n1ckfg I always wondered if upstream limits for cable were intentionally designed to foil/reduce piracy, since most cable providers were also entertainment providers and also part of media conglomerates. Do you think there is any truth to that?

@binarytango i always thought this was the case, but don’t have any facts to back it up

@benjedwards we didn't really have that luxury in the modem era either. telco's were our absolute worst enemies in that time, charging murderous LD rates for anything outside of your local calling area. hosting a bbs was either a part-time affair between 10pm-6am, or if your family was wealthy enough, to have a second or third phone line for 24/7.

@benjedwards Most residential fiber services seem to be offering symmetric rates now (I'm on 1Gb up/down). I'm not exactly running a datacenter from home, but it is super nice to Wireguard home from anywhere remote and have a stable LAN-lite experience.

To your point, I think we could easily serve neighborhood-sized distributed communities from home.

Hmm, that sure does sound familiar...

@benjedwards I think they've done a terrible disservice by deliberately undermining fiber in North America (I'd say because of the reduced barriers to entry for smaller competitors)...but the upstream thing with cable is a genuine tech limitation, it was originally only supposed to be able to send control codes and whatnot back to the service provider

@benjedwards i also thought that, too. There is also the fact that sometimes you don't even get a public IP address and your home devices are inaccessible from outside without an intermediary.