97 lines
3.4 KiB
Markdown
97 lines
3.4 KiB
Markdown
title: The broken Internet
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---
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pub_date: 2020-09-02
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---
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author: Nico Schottelius
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---
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twitter_handle: NicoSchottelius
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---
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_hidden: no
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---
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_discoverable: no
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---
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abstract:
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---
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body:
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## TL;DR
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The Internet is broken and IPv6 can repair part of it.
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## The Internet is broken
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If you are working in IT or if you
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computer scientist, you probably have mumbled this
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sentence already before yourself: "the network is broken", or more
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specific, "the Internet is broken".
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But what is really wrong with the Internet?
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## Computers are not reachable by default
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One of the most bizarre and weird things in the Internet is that
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computers cannot reach each other. You might have a question mark
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reading this claim, so I'll try to elaborate a bit:
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While you are reading this article, checkout your IP address on your
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computer. Does it start with 192.168., 10. or 172.16.? It probably
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does and that means your computer is configured to use a **private**, or
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**degraded** IPv4 address. These addresses are being filtered on the
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Internet and are used, because your provider does not have enough
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**proper, public** IPv4 addresses.
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## What is the problem with degraded IP addresses?
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The first problem is that these IP addresses are used multiple
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times. You, your neighbor, people in different cities - they all use
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the same IP address. So if you want to reach their computer you need
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to tell your computer "I want to reach that computer on 192.168.1.42",
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but your computer is already on the same address! How can it send to
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192.168.1.42? It can't!
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The second problem with these degraded IP addresses is that you cannot use
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them on the Internet. Because these IP addresses are private and not
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supposed to be seen in the Internet, they are filtered by ISPs.
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You might be puzzled reading this, because you are in the Internet
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reading this article, aren't you?
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## You are not in the Internet
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Practically seen, having a private IP address, you are a second class
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citizen of the Internet. You cannot tell anybody else "this is my IP
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address, just download a file from my computer". If you want to
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download a file from a friend, you will need to use an external
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service, like cloud storage.
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If you want to chat with someone, you again cannot just connect to the
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computer or mobile phone of the person you want to connect to. Instead
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you will need to use another intermediary party.
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This is not the Internet. The Internet is a network of networks, which
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allows anyone to connect anywhere.
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You want to access your own NAS that is in your home? You'll again
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need to connect it to someone else to be able to reach it.
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All those intermediate services introduce latency and cost into your
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daily routine. For many of us above scenario sounds like a normal
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thing to do. However, it is a very degraded version of the Internet
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that we are using.
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## No public IP addresses left
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So why are using private IP addresses anyway? Basically your ISP, like
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almost all ISPs in the world does not have enough
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public IP addresses to give every of your device a public IP
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address. So instead of connecting you directly to the Internet, you
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are given a maximum of 1 public IPv4 address for all your devices.
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However even 1 public IPv4 address per customer was too much for some
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ISPs. So they started repeating the NAT process, making the network
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more complex, slower and also putting you further away from other
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participants of the Internet.
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