I agree; but there are a few worrying trends that we need to keep an eye on with respect to this:
* IPv4 space. IPv4 addresses are increasingly expensive. In a perfect world we'd just get rid of them, but instead, we live in a world where Amazon owns roughly $3B worth of them. They're critical to serving web content; what happens when centralized corporate mega-powers are the only ones who can afford them, or own them?
* Email reputation. Its basically a boys club; if you don't send your emails through a reputable provider, with their acceptable use policies which generally reach far beyond "are you sending spam", you're likely to be spam-listed by the recipients mailbox, of which there are roughly four providers (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL).
* "Post-email" customer communication channels. Companies increasingly talk to customers over iMessage, FBM, Telegram, etc. These are all closed loops; piss off Apple and you lose that channel. A truly open, federated 1:1 chat solution is necessary. Unaware of any options here; Signal feels like we're getting there, but its not federated. Gaining market adoption is a whole other problem, but stomping on your privacy and freedom tends to be a big motivator.
* Domain registration. I don't think this is a huge threat vector for market freedom, given how many registrars there are and how lax IANA's rules are. Lets keep it that way.
* ARM. There's no way to just go purchase an ARM chip and host a server in your closet; no one is selling them. Amazon and Apple have their proprietary ones they aren't sharing. If the industry moves more toward ARM, to where hosting on x86 becomes intolerable due to software support (I expect it will, but on a timespan of decades), this is a big threat vector for increasing centralization into the mega-corp clouds. Definitely need an "Intel for ARM" (AMD? Nvidia? Uh, Intel?)
> There's no way to just go purchase an ARM chip and host a server in your closet; no one is selling them.
There are indeed readily-available ARM servers from the likes of DellEMC and HPE, and ready-to-integrate motherboards from the likes from Supermicro and Gigabyte, and AMD still sells ARM chips. This is very much opposite of your assertion.
> roughly four providers (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL).
At least for North America, three. Yahoo! and AOL are already operating under a single company (formerly Oath, now the much more boring Verizon Media Services), and they have "rationalize" (aka merge) their systems.
Sidenote: The Japanese Yahoo! is not related to the American Yahoo! (except it was before early 2000's came along).
Wiwynn will sell you ARM systems with Ampere Altra CPUs today. Systems integrators like Phoenics are booking orders, and various reviews for Mt Jade and Mt Snow suggest they’re not awful platforms.
Most /24 seem to be marketed a little higher than that, so you’re really looking at ~$7500 USD for a minimum size prefix which you could advertise.
I do generally agree with your assertion this isn’t unaffordable, since the people who are most likely to care about owning their IP space instead of borrowing one from a provider like AWS most likely have other more significant costs like LIR fees, renting space/power/cooling for equipment, buying servers and network devices, etc etc.
* IPv4 space. IPv4 addresses are increasingly expensive. In a perfect world we'd just get rid of them, but instead, we live in a world where Amazon owns roughly $3B worth of them. They're critical to serving web content; what happens when centralized corporate mega-powers are the only ones who can afford them, or own them?
* Email reputation. Its basically a boys club; if you don't send your emails through a reputable provider, with their acceptable use policies which generally reach far beyond "are you sending spam", you're likely to be spam-listed by the recipients mailbox, of which there are roughly four providers (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL).
* "Post-email" customer communication channels. Companies increasingly talk to customers over iMessage, FBM, Telegram, etc. These are all closed loops; piss off Apple and you lose that channel. A truly open, federated 1:1 chat solution is necessary. Unaware of any options here; Signal feels like we're getting there, but its not federated. Gaining market adoption is a whole other problem, but stomping on your privacy and freedom tends to be a big motivator.
* Domain registration. I don't think this is a huge threat vector for market freedom, given how many registrars there are and how lax IANA's rules are. Lets keep it that way.
* ARM. There's no way to just go purchase an ARM chip and host a server in your closet; no one is selling them. Amazon and Apple have their proprietary ones they aren't sharing. If the industry moves more toward ARM, to where hosting on x86 becomes intolerable due to software support (I expect it will, but on a timespan of decades), this is a big threat vector for increasing centralization into the mega-corp clouds. Definitely need an "Intel for ARM" (AMD? Nvidia? Uh, Intel?)