Yeah, decentralized is the default state of internet, you can always be disconnected from the WAN like some countries decided to do for their citizens. It wasn’t this connected in the first place, it was very volatile as servers can go down for whatever reason, that’s exactly why early servers have all those mirror options.(so you bookmark several address and visit another if the main one is down.)

And finding good community was a hassle but worth it. It’s the same for fediverse but now we have good protocols and search function/engine.