so much this. even late 2000s had an upstream problem.

impossible to serve anything with ISP blocking common ports to save their precious upstream bandwidth in a cable network, which is mostly downstream.

i couldn't believe when i moved to a place that had newer DSL tech (one block from the ATT brick building holding the city repeaters, so zero latency baby!) and while cable was giving everyone way over 100mbps connections i was only on 3mbps, but zero latency and 3mbps up too against who knows what that best-case-100mps-down cable really had for up... i could setup servers, had all open ports etc. it was mind blowing and at the same time it's so stupid that it highlights how bad it was then. we still had T1s at work in 2005 iirc.