Oddbean new post about | logout
 you are too focused on ports or web servers. A web server is just an executable, and opening ports or using free http tunneling service is the easiest part about hosting your own data. And the simplicity you win using holepunching , you lose on the other side because it doesn't work in browsers, unless you then use a relay, but then that is what an http tunneling service is.

finally, people don't want to host their own data, not because they physically can't open a port, but because they then need to manage electricity, connectivity, handle any bugs, upgrades, database migrations, backups etc.

sure for popular stuff like movies on Bittorrent it is magical, but if you are going to be mostly the only provider of the data, might as well just use a hosting service you trust. otherwise you are just pretending.