Is it easy/cheap to get a stable IP address? I would worry that if I just get any cheap VPS host, they might switch the IP address at any point, but I'm not sure how true that actually is.
The commercial domain name system is a perfect example of the type of artificial scarcity capitalism creates and exploits.
Domain names are tiny little rows in a database. They cost next-to-nothing to set up and maintain. There’s absolutely no reason why they couldn’t be a public good, paid for from the public purse.
And yet you pay (at times extortionate) amounts for them… why?
Because capitalism.
Isn't this a bit simplistic? Domain names are a limited resource, so there has to be some way to regulate who can use which domains. What alternative method of regulation would you propose and why it's better?
IPv4 addresses are scarce. IPv6 addresses are not easy to remember, and not supported everywhere.
Has the author never heard of shared hosting providers? This already exists. Those tend to be extremely cheap, often cheaper than a VPS, and do not require remembering IPs. You share one IP with many people, and the domain name and the Host header lets the server tell the sites apart. A .com is under $10/month. There are/were also free domains.
> Domain names are tiny little rows in a database. They cost next-to-nothing to set up and maintain. There’s absolutely no reason why they couldn’t be a public good, paid for from the public purse.
I don’t mind paying for the domain name so much but I do mind the fact that even after paying for the domain name, there is no guarantee of having full control over the domain name. I do mind that even after spending money year after year, we are only renting a domain name, with the possibility of the domain name being taken away from us anytime!
I used to be a big proponent of hosting your email address at your own domain name. But then I had a very unpleasant experience of losing my domain name several years ago, for no fault of mine, due to anti-malware operations completely unrelated to my website. After that incident, I am not so sure!
The article is conveniently ignoring that getting your own IP block ranges from practically impossible (ipv4) to very involved (ipv6). And then you also need to figure out way to route traffic for that IP block; not all ISPs and hosting providers are willing to offer BGP sessions and whatnot. In any case it will be orders of magnitude more expensive than basic domain name and DNS hosting.
I like the idea of popularizing using IP addresses for personal sites. I don't like trying to rebrand them Web Numbers, since imo it accomplishes nothing but being potentially confusing.
The bigger issue is hosting these small web sites for people who are used to using platforms which make connecting with other users much more seamless.
Most people want to allow comments and replies at least sometimes and that becomes a bigger headache when you host yourself.
I'd love to see Yarn become a solution for one step setup for people. I'd be even more excited if it's done in a way which is modular enough to allow "power users" to customize the framework, and potentially even bring their own framework and integrate it with features provided by Yarn. For example, maybe I want my framework to do the markdown->HTML and templating, but I want to use the comment system from Yarn.
Is it explained somewhere how links are supposed to work, especially if the intended use case is that you would just be using your own "address book"? I guess the address book is just a bookmark (and not like a /etc/hosts-type thing?), such that people aren't sharing links that don't work with each other. But the alternative is that they're sharing IP links, which, unless I am misunderstanding, means you probably do have to memorize IP addresses, and... all of them? Otherwise every link you post to your latest blog post or whatever just looks like a bunch of inscrutable (scary) numbers to people?
Paying $2-$10/year for a non-premium name (which will be drastically easier for your readers to use than any IP address) seems strictly better than arranging for a VPS static IP and chaining the identity of your site onto that VPS provider forever. I'm not sure this is what IP address certificates are really meant for.
In my opinion, it's much more complicated to register an IP with RIPE than registering any domain. Becoming a RIPE NCC member is hard.
Sure, you can work around it and route subnets or IPs from an existing IP or use NAT. But if I understand it correctly (please correct me if I'm wrong), you need a VPN or another way to tunnel it through the public network.
So you are in the same situation as with domains when you use an existing IP that someone else has registered.
My personal site's IP address has changed a ton over the last 5 years, but the domain name has been able to stay the same. So anyone who knows my site can always find it at the same place. That seems like a valuable service which I would like to keep.
Maybe what the author really wants is a cheap or free TLD that gives out uuids instead of human readable domain names? Or as they sort of touch on it could be subdomain based? I think having a layer between address and IP helps a lot vs using "raw" ip addresses...
17 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 54.7 ms ] threadHas the author never heard of shared hosting providers? This already exists. Those tend to be extremely cheap, often cheaper than a VPS, and do not require remembering IPs. You share one IP with many people, and the domain name and the Host header lets the server tell the sites apart. A .com is under $10/month. There are/were also free domains.
> 8,000,000,000 humans
Alright everyone choose your opponent.
I don’t mind paying for the domain name so much but I do mind the fact that even after paying for the domain name, there is no guarantee of having full control over the domain name. I do mind that even after spending money year after year, we are only renting a domain name, with the possibility of the domain name being taken away from us anytime!
I used to be a big proponent of hosting your email address at your own domain name. But then I had a very unpleasant experience of losing my domain name several years ago, for no fault of mine, due to anti-malware operations completely unrelated to my website. After that incident, I am not so sure!
I have written more about that incident here:
https://susam.net/sinkholed.html
I wish the mainstream World Wide Web were built around the concept of owning a domain name where we could prove our ownership using a private key.
The bigger issue is hosting these small web sites for people who are used to using platforms which make connecting with other users much more seamless.
Most people want to allow comments and replies at least sometimes and that becomes a bigger headache when you host yourself.
I'd love to see Yarn become a solution for one step setup for people. I'd be even more excited if it's done in a way which is modular enough to allow "power users" to customize the framework, and potentially even bring their own framework and integrate it with features provided by Yarn. For example, maybe I want my framework to do the markdown->HTML and templating, but I want to use the comment system from Yarn.
Then there's IPv4 exhaustion with that in hand:
I could see phishing being a problem for any notable website.
But having certs for IPs does seem like a nice option without paying for a domain.
Same with the https://small-tech.org link in the footer, why is that not an IP address link?
Sure, you can work around it and route subnets or IPs from an existing IP or use NAT. But if I understand it correctly (please correct me if I'm wrong), you need a VPN or another way to tunnel it through the public network.
So you are in the same situation as with domains when you use an existing IP that someone else has registered.
What about the infrastructure to maintain it? What about the dns traffic volume?
This feels very reductionist and probably more expensive then led to believe
[1] https://media.ccc.de/v/2025-170-how-to-become-your-own-isp
Maybe what the author really wants is a cheap or free TLD that gives out uuids instead of human readable domain names? Or as they sort of touch on it could be subdomain based? I think having a layer between address and IP helps a lot vs using "raw" ip addresses...