danger/u/
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Internet doesn't make sense

| If internet is just a bunch of computers linked together seeing what is in each other archives, why do I have to pay a company for it and not just connect my computer to those other ones myself? Please, could someone explain it to me?


| Good question. You seem to forget that there is an infrastructure that was build and needs to be maintained. You may ask "but why is such an important thing not generally in public hand and accessible for free?" Well this is both for historical and ideological reasons.


| This is one of the times where capitalism falls short. If ypu wanted to, you could create your own ISP. But the infrastructure costs are so prohibitive that only the megarich have that possibility. So yeah, the internet is free and easy to access, but only a handful of people can allow that.


| Volunteer-based community networks are possible too, e.g. guifi.net for remote locations in Catalonia (too expensive for ISPs to cover, so they made their own): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_network

Wireless mesh networking (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network) and a more ad-hoc Internet-of-Thingsy approach is another possibility, where every device could route traffic from any other device. Security-wise it's probably a bit of a nightmare, though.


| Just passed by and got a question, i understand about the dns servers and routing, but is it really needed? Anyone can make a private lan network but why you can't make just a bigger one? Why instead of it being nice and free has dns servers controlled by a single company, and other companies put big cables and want money for that? Maintaining is bullshit because in theory everyone should be able to bring his cable and maintain only his cable, but instead we have isps


| >>529575 How would you find the computer/server you want without DNS? In a small private LAN you could scan the network or advertise who you are (and what services your computer provides), but I don't see that happening for MANs or WANs (especially globally).
I think the traffic overhead just for keeping track of who is where and does what would be enormous


| >>529437 to add that would even still be fine and within the realm of capitalism, but the ruling bodies like the FCC and such actually prevent just anyone from starting with the amount of red tape, and when a city tried to make their own actually sued them to try and stop them


| >>529575 DNS has to exist so you can do name resolution, and while DNS servers can be ran by literally anyone icann keeps everything together, they're a non-profit organization as well

You're making the argument that we don't need isps at all and we should just maintain our own cable, do you not see how hard that would be? How exactly are you going to connect to your neighbor and someone in the next state over as well as someone across ocean


| So if I got it right, I could make my own small network with accessible people nearby, but it would be too much hassle to maintain and connect cables myself to the giant existing one? It actually makes all sense, thanks, g/u/rls. (For someone who's wondering, I'm the one who made the thread)


| The internet is free, anonymous, and neutral. And is currently dead.


| >>530017 the giant existing one is owned and maintained by the fucking isps


| the undersea cables aren't a natural resource that's always been there man, someone has to pay to repair them

Total number of posts: 12, last modified on: Sat Jan 1 00:00:00 1550180484

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