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Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

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191–200 of 327 posts

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#191
post #40

IPv6 gets mentioned plenty, and I will take the side that it should have been rolled out WAY sooner than it did, and it should have been rolled out in a way that made it easier to do what I call the Apple Method: Just get it out there and the people will adapt to it. DNS is a horrid mess that should have been designed with ease of reading in mind. And I know that DNS was designed way before it, but I think a data tra…

This touches on what I think is really wrong with internet innovation. We haven’t adopted a new wide spread protocol since the early 2000s because all big tech wants to silo their user base or make a protocol that gives them a massive first mover advantage(AMP, RCS).

I wish we could make new protocols at all.

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#192
post #78
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the security aspects of NAT? e.g. Isolating subnets and restricting outbound access. Seems like a useful defence-in-depth mechanism in case of misconfigured firewall rules.

There isn't any security aspect to NAT, you're relying on the fact nobody's added an upstream route back to you: https://www.anvilsecure.com/blog/dhcp-games-with-smart-route...

NAT without port forwarding done by router facing the ISP, the default kind of NAT which the subscriber does not have to worry about configuring, has very great security aspect. Connect your home network devices to the router doing that kind of NAT,and this automatically protects all devices in your local network from incoming connections.

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#193
post #174

Domain parking/squatting is disallowed. You’d have to make the rules in some imperfect way, but it’d be better than what we have today.

Domain squatting is like a disease, but how would you regulate it? Where is the line between just a parked domain that a lot of tech (and non-tech) people reserve for their future projects, and a domain acquired for re-sale? Given a good offer you would probably sell one of the domains you own just as well, wouldn't you?

How are trademarks registered? Why not use the same procedure for domain names?

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#194
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: DNS resolvers and ISPs are the reason for amplification attacks. ISPs should simply check where the UDP traffic is coming from, and filter out packets that have a different UDP source address inside them. This would literally make the internet DDoS free.

There are DDoSes that are based on botnets without specifically relying on amplification or reflection. There have even been DDoSes relying on user-contributed resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Orbit_Ion_Cannon Amplification makes a DDoS bigger, but isn't what makes it a DDoS.

> Amplification makes a DDoS bigger, but isn't what makes it a DDoS.

I know, but large botnets like MIRAI and similar usually take advantages of how UDP flooding works, because TCP RST packets don't scale as well.

I was just mentioning that because ISPs could easily get rid of most UDP-based DDoS attacks if they would watch their networks' packet sources (what they're doing anyways).

Usually it's literally just a comparison of IANA assigned IP ranges (of source+victim being inside or outside), and if they're mismatching, it's very likely to be a UDP flooding attack.

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#196
post #128

The "browser" is a blank execution sandbox with a rendering context. The remote server sends programs (using something like WASM) with a standardized ABI. The program can use the rendering context to put stuff on the screen or receive user input. Indexing and page interoperability is done by exposing standard functions which yield the necessary metadata. For example, if you want your site to be indexable by a search…

Unblockable ads and popups, uncopyable text, yay!

You can still block ads by recognizing them at the pixel level.

Same for copying text.

Advantage: you can also select text in images, and block ads that are images.

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#197
post #40

IPv6 gets mentioned plenty, and I will take the side that it should have been rolled out WAY sooner than it did, and it should have been rolled out in a way that made it easier to do what I call the Apple Method: Just get it out there and the people will adapt to it. DNS is a horrid mess that should have been designed with ease of reading in mind. And I know that DNS was designed way before it, but I think a data tra…

> so much of it is build on HTTP protocols

this is mostly an artifact of how most firewalls are configured to only allow "neccesary" stuff; this also applies to ipv6 and hence all dreams of it re-enabling end-to-end connectivity are kinda moot.

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#198
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $20/mo would have got you enough to get started. What? Have you forgotten what your first time was like? There is a huge difference between thinking: > "I build my first shitty website, if i leave my PC on everybody in the world can use it. Who knows what will happen?" And instead being required to go: > "I'll spend 20$ a month to maybe entertain a couple of people for a couple of minutes by using someone else's ha…

if your PC only consumes 50w (somewhat low for a desktop). and your power is 20c a KWH (a little high on average, but not crazy high, though perhaps 0 in a dorm room). you'll be spending $7-$8 a month just on electricity. So it's not "free" to run it on your PC. now, if you view that your PC runs 24/7 anyways, perhaps (much like the dorm room case) the marginal cost is 0. I'm simply making the case that it might not…

It's not entirely free, but the cost is shared with other usage of your computer, and you have much more resources at your disposal.

Then and now, any second hand hardware will yield more computing power than cheap VMs you can rent. (of course you can rent a dedicated server with 32 cores and 128GB RAM nowadays, this doesn't change that entry level offers are very limited on resources compared to what you can easily find AFK)

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#199
post #90

I've thought about this a lot. I'd throw away HTML/CSS and start over with a client centric rendering protocol that is based on presentation first and semantics second. The language would be run-time compiled to describe exactly what needs to be rendered on the page and would be streamable to prevent rendering locks. Typical page size would go from 1M typical to 64K-128K being typical. Images would stream in after in…

Would this really change page sizes significantly?

Take amazon landing as an example:

* HTML/CSS: 80 KB and 88 KB

* Images: 3.2 MB

* Font: 180 KB

* JavaScript: 260 KB

Reducing HTML/CSS to 1 Byte each, would make nearly no difference, because huge parts of pages are in images.

Re: Ask HN: If the Internet were redesigned today, what changes would you make?

#200
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $20/mo would have got you enough to get started. What? Have you forgotten what your first time was like? There is a huge difference between thinking: > "I build my first shitty website, if i leave my PC on everybody in the world can use it. Who knows what will happen?" And instead being required to go: > "I'll spend 20$ a month to maybe entertain a couple of people for a couple of minutes by using someone else's ha…

if your PC only consumes 50w (somewhat low for a desktop). and your power is 20c a KWH (a little high on average, but not crazy high, though perhaps 0 in a dorm room). you'll be spending $7-$8 a month just on electricity. So it's not "free" to run it on your PC. now, if you view that your PC runs 24/7 anyways, perhaps (much like the dorm room case) the marginal cost is 0. I'm simply making the case that it might not…

But it feels basically free which is the important thing vs having to set up billing. $20 a month is a lot if you're a teenager with limited or no income.
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