In other words (they do get to this point right away), port forwarding is pretty useful, and most of us don't have it anymore.
I'm sick and tired of the way ISPs treat us. It's literally written into my lease what company I will pay for internet, and how much I will pay them. It is not, however, written in my lease how fast the connection will be. Not only am I unable to forward ports, I can't even change my own WiFi password! Sure, I could make a fuss and probably obtain access to my router, but it isn't worth the hassle.
But why is there a hassle to begin with? How in the hell is it in anyone's interest to keep me from configuring my own router? I can come up with plenty of authoritative bullshit answers to this question, but they are all authoritative bullshit. I think that's the real answer: we have systemically built our society to operate on authoritative bullshit. sigh
Tailscale is a usable workaround, but it shouldn't exist. It shouldn't need to exit. I just want to be able to host a server. Is that really so much to ask?
> Not only am I unable to forward ports, I can't even change my own WiFi password!
You can't BYOD? I got a lot of info out of the install techs when my home fiber was installed, including the router password, because they saw my setup and said "whoa... this is not a normal person setup". I said no, it isn't, you want me to walk you through what I've got? They did.
I ended up putting their device to DMZ all traffic to my device and turning off its radios (I have multiple AP's with wired backend). Technically double NAT, but in the first step all ports were forwarded, so it didn't affect anything. It took me a while to have a weekend where my wife was gone and I could risk breaking things for a few hours, but after that I was able to remove their device entirely. Turns out it uses a VLAN on the outgoing connection, so I had to figure out how to set that up on my router.
Anything that's more effort than using tailscale isn't worth it to me. I just treat it like public Wi-Fi that no one but me uses.
My frustration is that it's difficult in the first place. I shouldn't need to call someone (and hope they both comprehend and help) just to configure a device inside my home. It's absurd, and everything that led us to this point deserves criticism.
Sorry for the late reply, just wanted to say I have felt your pain starting a long time ago, and I agree it's absurd. I don't even do this as a job. I'm just out there trying to make sure that my wife and I have functional internet at our house and her parents' house as a layman with a modicum of experience.
The number of users who even understand why they might want to do that aren't a consideration when they build such a service/agreement. It's only considering what the average tenant is looking for, which is more akin to "water comes out of the pipes when I move in" than "do I get to mess with the plumbing?".
The authoritative bullshit isn't what society is running on, it's what society is giving as an excuse for enshittification that enriches interested parties.
Your landlord (I'm guessing based on having seen it before) gets kickbacks from the ISP to force all tenants onto a specific (probably overpriced) Internet plan. The interest in keeping you from configuring your own router is in allowing the ISP's enshittifying further monetization tactics to proceed unopposed. The two big ones I've seen in this kind of setup are:
Using DNS enforced by the router to gather data and place ads on any 404 error.
Sharing their WiFi network that you lease with the ISP's other customers nearby.
I'm not even confident they get kickbacks. They probably just believe that either negotiating service details or providing infrastructure for competitive options would require more work from them. They are probably right about that: I'm not hassling them over it. I'm really not in a good position to anyway. As much as I would like to attribute malice to this behavior, it's most likely to be no more than laziness.
If I moved into a house, I could get 1gbit symmetric from Google Fiber or UTOPIA at half the price. But that doesn't matter because I cannot remotely afford a mortgage.
The real problem is Monopoly. Not the market dominance kind: the no one gets to compete kind. We have it in real estate, where every piece of the market is overvalued so far that very few individual people can meaningfully participate. We have it with ISPs who get to literally own the last mile infrastructure, so their customers can't physically connect to a competitor.
I'm sick and tired of the way ISPs treat us. It's literally written into my lease what company I will pay for internet, and how much I will pay them. It is not, however, written in my lease how fast the connection will be. Not only am I unable to forward ports, I can't even change my own WiFi password! Sure, I could make a fuss and probably obtain access to my router, but it isn't worth the hassle.
But why is there a hassle to begin with? How in the hell is it in anyone's interest to keep me from configuring my own router? I can come up with plenty of authoritative bullshit answers to this question, but they are all authoritative bullshit. I think that's the real answer: we have systemically built our society to operate on authoritative bullshit. sigh
Tailscale is a usable workaround, but it shouldn't exist. It shouldn't need to exit. I just want to be able to host a server. Is that really so much to ask?