>In the early days of the Internet, if you wanted to make files available to others, you just ran an ftp server on your machine. Today that is no longer possible unless you pay recurring fees to your provider for a “real” Internet address
Yep; they quickly figured out that us having a static IP was useful to us and now sell that back to us. True, it’s easier for *them* to keep a range of IPs available rather than have an IP tied to you like a phone #...
My web hosting is static IP, even though it’s not a dedicated machine. People like to share files through services (dropbox/onedrive/google) but you can also drop files on a web host and link ftp://(place) or http://(place) at will, even if you prefer (w.x.y.z) instead of (domain).
Lastly, I keep seeing smaller fiber companies spring up; as they’re providing gigabit up/down and aren’t also/mainly MSM providers, they seem also happy to provide static IPs.
IPv6 takes care of that problem. They are not always routable but that is changing. But I get IPv4 addresses as part of the $5/month VPS deal. There is no reason to host content at your house when you can do it at a fast virtual server farm.