self-hosting culture is doing a quick refresh on your fedi timeline as you walk out the door to a cafe so you can be sure your ISP didn't change your IP since your last DNS update so you can SSH into your home server to get some work done from the cafe.
@technomancy I've always wondered, how do you become your own ISP? Do I have to convince some university that the wire that comes out of their building and into my home is assigned a particular IP address or something?
@JordiGH with ipv4 exhaustion it's surely a lost cause; faster to just wait for everyone to switch to ipv6 where this isn't a problem
@technomancy I mean, either way, where do I plug this wire into?
@JordiGH my vague understanding is that most ISPs connect to backbone and are reselling access to that; the larger ones own some of the backbone infrastructure and the smaller ones pay for access to it. apparently my provider (CenturyLink) is a Tier 1; I didn't realize that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_backbone
Internet backbone - Wikipedia