January 1, 2026
From dialup dreams to tunnel schemes
Beyond the Nat: Cgnat, Bandwidth, and Practical Tunneling
Home internet nostalgia meets CGNAT reality: gamers groan, tunnelers flex, Tailscale stans cheer
TLDR: Home users now sit behind shared ISP firewalls (CGNAT), but simple tunnels can restore access to your stuff. Commenters battle over nostalgia, gamers hate rate limits, Tailscale fans shrug, and skeptics argue IPv6 won’t win—making this both a practical guide and a spicy internet debate.
The post breaks down why your home internet feels like a gated community now: IPv4 addresses ran out, so providers hide most of us behind big shared firewalls called CGNAT. Cue the drama. One commenter smacks the nostalgia: “90s plug-and-play? Try dialup,” reminding everyone the “simple era” mostly belonged to schools and businesses. Another drops a bomb that a shiny new fiber provider ships CGNAT with no IPv6 (the newer address system). Result: gamers groan, neighbors share rate limits, and self-hosters clutch their home labs.
The article insists “speed” is more than a big number—capacity, symmetry, and guarantees matter—while popularity surges can look like attacks (the old Slashdot effect). Then the community goes full hacker movie: one user shares an SSH reverse tunnel trick, and the piece shows easy routes with bore-cli and Cloudflare Tunnel to slip past CGNAT—while warning to mind your ISP’s rules.
But the hottest flame war? IPv6 vs forever-IPv4. One voice claims IPv6 won’t ever win because big tech is comfy with NAT; others hold out hope IPv6 restores direct connections. Meanwhile the comic relief: a proud Tailscale fan says they “stopped caring,” Tailscale making the pain vanish and the bill basically zero. Internet romance, ISP heartbreak, and tunnels as the sneaky rebound—chef’s kiss.
Key Points
- •IPv4 address scarcity led to widespread NAT, CGNAT, and mixed IPv6 deployments.
- •CGNAT conserves public IPv4 addresses but blocks inbound connectivity, affecting self-hosting and real-time applications.
- •Bandwidth quality hinges on capacity, symmetry, and guarantees; residential links are usually asymmetric and best-effort.
- •Traffic surges and misconfigured bots can overwhelm small uplinks similar to DDoS, not always due to malicious actors.
- •Tunneling (bore-cli, Cloudflare Tunnel) can restore reachability behind CGNAT; users should respect ISP terms of service.