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Excite Could Go Dark On Friday
robvasquez writes: "According to this CNET article, excite @home could be pulling the plug on cable modem subscribers. What's your providers back up plan? Could milions of trolls and Nimda spreaders be taken off line?"
Cox@home is staying up, they're just going to be dropping the "@home" part.
In Canada - Rogers cable is currently switching to their own servers.
-->If Linux was written by Bill Gates & Co. - no one would want to switch !!
Some of us slashdot readers are going to be caught in that too you know.
It's not all "trolls and Nimda spreaders" who happen to be on @home, and could be screwed.
blah.
I got an email from AT&T yesterday:
Dear *************,
As you may be aware, Excite@Home, our service provider, recently filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. In order to continue providing you the quality and reliable high-speed cable Internet service that you expect, AT&T has submitted a proposal to purchase the Excite@Home network. If AT&T is able to purchase and manage the Excite@Home network, there will be no immediate change to your current service. If the network purchase is approved, we will notify you via your AT&T@Home email account as soon as possible.
As a precautionary measure, AT&T Broadband also has been building its own network and service in the event that AT&T is unable to purchase the Excite@Home network. If the proposal to purchase the Excite@Home network is not approved, your service may be temporarily interrupted and it will be necessary to move your service to a new AT&T Broadband network.
In any event, AT&T Broadband is deeply committed to providing you the best cable Internet service possible and communicating any upcoming changes. Be sure to frequently check the "Announcements and Updates" section of our Web site for the latest information about your service: http://help.broadband.att.com/
In the meantime, please check your AT&T Broadband email account(s) on a daily basis. Doing this will automatically save your email to your hard drive as well as ensure timely receipt of important future communications from AT&T Broadband. Also, if you use our Personal WebSpace feature, we recommend you backup your personal web page(s) by copying it to a diskette, CD, or to your computer hard drive.
If migrating your service to the AT&T Broadband network and service becomes necessary, we will call to notify you of the migration timing. A message will be left on your voicemail or recorder if no one is available at the time of the call. As a precaution, we are providing you the following instructions, which will enable you to connect your computer to the new AT&T Broadband network. Again, you will only need to follow these steps in the event you receive a call from AT&T Broadband instructing you to do so.
1. Restart your computer to begin the process.
2. Open your Internet browser. You should be automatically sent to an AT&T Broadband welcome page. This page includes instructions on how to download software used to change your computer settings for the new network. If the welcome page does not automatically appear when you open your browser, please go to http://newuser.attbi.com/ (This website will only be available if the service migration is necessary).
3. Follow the instructions on the Web site to run the Automated Configuration Utility (or you can choose to change your computer settings manually).
4. The software will automatically change your Outlook Express email client, your Internet Explorer settings, and configure your computer for the new AT&T Broadband network. Information on how to manually change your settings for other email clients and Internet browsers such as Netscape Communicator and Netscape Navigator can be found at http://help.broadband.att.com/
5. You can now surf the Internet and use email on the new AT&T Broadband Internet network and service.
If migrating your service to the new network is necessary, certain aspects of your service would change. Your current homepage would feature new content and your current email address domain name would change. Please note that your username would remain the same. For example, jsmith@home.com would change to jsmith@attbi.com. If service changes are necessary, a detailed description of all changes will be provided at http://help.broadband.att.com/ in the Announcements and Updates section.
Whether the Excite@Home network is purchased or your service is migrated to the new AT&T Broadband network, your Subscriber Agreement, which outlines the general Terms and Conditions of your service will change. You will be able to view the amended and restated Subscriber Agreement that will apply to the AT&T Broadband Internet service at http://help.broadband.att.com/ Your continued use of the service will constitute your acceptance of the amended and restated AT&T Broadband Internet Subscriber Agreement.
If you need assistance, visit us online at http://help.broadband.att.com/ to chat with a customer care specialist. Please remember, AT&T Broadband will call you if any action is required on your part.
While we realize these potential changes may cause some inconvenience, please be assured that we are doing everything possible to avoid any service disruptions. However, in the event the service is disrupted during a migration, you will receive a credit for those days of interrupted service.
We are working hard to provide you with the best high-speed cable Internet service possible. We appreciate your patience and your business.
Sincerely,
Susan K. Marshall
Senior Vice President
Advanced Broadband Services
I'd supply links but most Shaw customers visiting this site probably already know, and I'm feeling lazy.
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
FYI, there are three Canadian providers of @Home's service. The biggest (at least in eastern Canada) is Rogers, which started up separate email servers on Friday (after two delays for more testing), and started up their separate web servers (AFAIK) about a week before that. The 2nd-largest, Shaw, wanted to separate itself about a year ago, and started switching web servers long before @Home even filed for Chp.11, and switched email services about 2 months ago. Cogeco switched it's web and email services about 1 month ago.
My other sig is funny!
the difference between Chapter 11 bankruptcy (where the court holds off the creditors while you submit a plan and work towards paying everything off and becoming profitable) and "going dark"???
No wonder so many dot.coms went tits-up
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
I'm hearing rumors that @Home is delibrately causing issues with customer account conversions at various cable offices. My fiance is a CSR, and she's been talking about how @Home's sytems are no longer removing modem records from the headends, and the regional General Manager is contantly on the phone bitching at them to fix it (and fast). Apparently every time they try to convert a customer, they issue the account close operation, and it returns successfully, but the customer's modem stays online. When they add the local record for the subscriber, their UBR is given the appropriate information and will accept the modems, but the customer has a 50/50 chance of the @Home UBR responding before theirs. Effectively keeping most customers on @Home's network.
You'd think that they were just having issues with their UBR, or maybe with their access to @Home's subscriber management system, but they are able to successfully add new customers to their own service just fine, and everything was going smoothly with conversions until just a week ago.
Could be @Home being a prick until the very last minute, could be a coincedence. I'm not apt to support one theory or the other, I'm just relaying what I hear.
Moderation: -1 Heresay! (lmao)
SERIOUSLY: I have Comcast@Home and do NOT want to lose my service. This is the best ISP that I've had (partly because of the speed). I waited for months to be able to get off of my 56k modem (which could only get ~21 due to the terrible phone lines), only to have it canceled in a few months? Just my luck. I am about 12x too far out for DSL and my only other option would be to go back to ISDN which is about 15x slower and costs easily 3x as much per month. I hope @home knows that there are many people like me who would be willing to pay an extra $5 or $10 per month if only I could keep my service. I have no other options. Let's review why:
I'm off to try to find the Judge's e-mail so that I can tell him of the situation he may put me and many others in. Of course hopefully the talks will work and none of this will happen, but with my luck...
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Comcast seems to have confidence that there will be no interruption in service. AT&T is buying Excite@Home's broadband pieces, so of course they won't be worried. Since Comcast and Cox are major shareholders along with AT&T, there's plenty of squabbling because no one wants their customers to go dark.
I use Yahoo and find their junk-mail folder to be far superior to Hotmail's (I use both actually). Also, Yahoo provides you with 6 MB of email messages in your online mailbox, while Hotmail only allows 2 or 3. I admit that's still not much, but if you save that much email, why is it still online? As for reliability, I've never seen Yahoo to be down ever. Maybe that one time from the DDoS attack, but I didn't check my email that day.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
We've been barraged for a couple months on Shaw @Home to set up new shaw.ca addresses.
This coming from someone with a geocities webpage.
Kettle, meet Pot.
BilldaCat
I have MS Messanger on constantly and down time is so rare I can't remember the last time it happened.
comcast took over the local cable company, and is forcing my ISP to stop providing cablemodem access. Choices are to stay with cable, and get comcast's crappy service which won't allow me any servers, go with sprint/earthlink dsl (yeah, right!), or stay with current ISP, but pay more, but still run all my servers. Any way I go, I end up with PPPoE and a 128K upstream cap (I have 512 both directions now).
Please read this thread on DSL Reports. It includes important information, schedule, etc. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 22:52:21 -0800
To: Chip Rosenthal <chip@unicom.com>
Subject: Fwd: Newsletter Provided by The Black World Today [Evaluation - see full header]
From: AUP Enforcement Team <abuse@home.net>
Reply-To: AUP Enforcement Team <abuse@home.net>
Dear Chip Rosenthal,
Your message, including your pasted-in email message body, firewall log,
or newsgroup header, exceeded the maximum message size allowed by our
mail service. Please reduce the size of your email message and exclude
any excessive message body or MIME/UNICODE text.
For firewall users, usually one line detailing a system probe attempt
from an @Home user is sufficient for us to take action on the event.
Multiple lines detailing more than one event from the same user are not
necessary.
Thank you,
The @Home Network Policy Management Team
The message they refused was a whopping 50K.
Oh, and of course they fail to return the original report so that you can revise and resubmit it. That's a favorite trick of spam-friendly ISPs.
Pity @Home flushed all that money on the Excite portal. Otherwise, maybe they could afford another disk shelf for their mail server.
excite sucked and was voted as the planet's worst ISP.
AT&T has a great plan I hope. although a monkey with a stick can do a better job than excite did.
just let the local cable offices deal with it. it's not like a proxy server, dhcp server and email server takes anyone with a brain to operate.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Sometimes monopolies are good. I'm all for free trade and competition, but don't be blind to the virtues of a solid system of regulated monopoly that's worked for generations just because sometimes you fall for hyper-capitalist rhetoric.
Could milions of trolls and Nimda spreaders be taken off line?
:)
What, AOL are being closed down too?
but it is pissing awfully a lot of people
It sure is!
Frankly, I'm very disappointed with what Rogers is doing to its subscribers. I've been a customer for over two years, and I haven't left despite the frequent occurrences of down-time (initially, at least). It's gotten better since... Until now.
The single most horrible change that was implemented was the requirement for the 'From' field to be set to an @rogers.com address. That is completely unacceptable for many people, like me. I use a forwarding address for specifically this reason: I don't ever want to go through the hassle of informing people of an address change. I refuse to change the 'From' field, and rightly so. Problem is, I can't send email outside of the @rogers.com domain. Oh joy.
Another great disappointment is the loss of static IP. When I signed up, I was promised a static IP address. A year and a half later (not bad!) the service changed to dynamic, with the option of static (eg. gather settings, set the router, go on with life). Once the transition is complete, static addressing won't even be possible, much to my dismay. I don't care that I need it or not, it's a matter of a promise being a promise.
But there's more! The inbound email servers changed their user name requirements to "userid"@rogers.com (from "userid" plain and simple). This is a pain to get working under Netscape 4.x. For those of you who have yet to make the transition, please go see this Netscape article for information on how to make the change work. I didn't have time to look that up beforehand, so I got my family to make the transition to Netscape 6.2.
The list goes on... Tens of thousands of the 500 000 Rogers@home subscribers use Netscape. It was supported for a long time. Slowly, however, support for Netscape was dropped. Now the techies, whether they want to or not, are not allowed to assist with Netscape matters (save for giving out server info... I'll get to that).
When it comes to server info, Rogers did not, sadly, tell the techies or even their supervisors what the "real" servers are. Instead, they insist everyone use 'pop' and 'smtp', which is find and dandy if you don't have a router, but useless if you do. It took a lot of searching through newsgroups to find what the real servers are. I don't blame the techies for this; I blame Rogers.
I have much to gripe about over this transition and the service in general, but I think this is enough ;-) It's a shame customers are being neglected and lied to as much as they are. If Rogers weren't the monopoly around here, I'd consider (NOT necessarily follow through on) switching to another service. Sympatico, though, is not an option (for me. I dislike PPPoE).
Thanks for hearing me through. Cheers!
This could get interesting.... I have an @Home cable modem, but am totally self-hosting. I use the cable modem solely for connectivity, running my own DNS servers, getting mail via MX records at my old ISP, etc.
It should go without saying that @Home customer service has no idea what to do with me. They don't have a mechanism to support a "foreign" email address for customers who neither need nor want the "@Home experience." (It could be worse - USWorst DSL service now requires you agree to the incomparable "MSN experience.") Every service call is a joy because I have no clue what my username or password is, and they can't believe anyone has had an account for years yet never logged in.
Hopefully if things go *splat* I'll get a call... or can get through to them. I'll be severely annoyed if I have to go back to dialup after I finally dropped the second phone line.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
The ensuing clamor might be enough to motivate the gubment to monopolize Internet provision and bring it to everyone for a reasonable fee.
This is wrong on so many levels it's difficult to even begin. First of all, the government is the last entity I think of when I consider responsive, efficient organizations. I don't know about you, but I like both of those qualities in my internet connection.
This is ignoring the fact that Carnivore would go by the wayside. Who needs Carnivore when you just own the whole thing?
We see what happens in other countries when the government runs the internet. Why, just this week, we've had 17k internet cafes shut down in China and Saudi Arabia looking to build an even bigger firewall.
You thought that the interstate highway system was yours because of gasoline taxes? In times of war the DOT has the authority to take over whatever roads the military needs to move troops/supplies. I don't know about you, but I don't relish the idea of getting kicked off the net for any reason, let alone some religious nutjob.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
I have been on comcast @home for a year and a half now. Completely addicted to my connection... Has ANYONE heard what comcast may be doing about this? I know that @home is just the portal/email/webspace/proxy... surely they wouldnt just drop the customers b/c of that would they?
Anyone? (Do not mod up please)
Here is the E-Mail I received from COX:
... now and in the future.
:)
Dear Cox @ Home customer:
Recently, you were informed that our high-speed Internet partner - Excite @
Home - filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection. We recognize that this
situation may have caused you some concern about the future of your service.
Rest assured, we are taking all the necessary steps to provide continued reliable
high-speed Internet service to our customers
We are deeply committed to providing you with a quality high-speed Internet
service. For several months, we have been hard at work creating a new Cox-
managed network to better serve you. There are many benefits to directly
managing our own network, such as:
* Easier, more streamlined customer service experience.
* Enhanced network performance.
* Ability to bring you the latest in cutting-edge technology and product
features.
In the weeks ahead, we'll continue to keep you informed and share more details
of our exciting plans. For more information, please visit www.cox.com/moreinfo
We thank you for being a valued Cox customer.
Sincerely,
Cox Communications
Hopefully, this E-Mail means that I do not have to dig out my 56k external modem again. Sometimes, I think that there would be fewer headaches with Dial-up, oh well, Mo Bandwidth, Mo Problems
I hate sigs.
The local @home partner (Optus) here in Oz bought out our local division of excite@home. So no big problems here at all, we even get to keep our e-mail addresses :-) Only thing is there were a few small glitches a few weekends ago as they were transferring everyone over to new non-@home server infrastructure and new ip-addressing scheme. They did the whole shebang in one weekend.
...this is getting out of hand
www.home.net
News release, letter to subscribers and excite users, vendor and investor info.
May actually be a source of information for youse guys.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
AT&T recently sent my folks a letter informing them that prices had gone up to $50 per month. This caused them to seriously consider the worth of the cable service. Two weeks later, the statement arrives - my folks had overpaid $5, and it was refunded to their account.
And just today, during a SSH session at school, the SSH session went dead for no good reason. When I got home, I discovered that the cable modem lights were syncing again and again and again and again. Once lights were finally synced up, I went online to discover a network outage, no doubt.
Then there's the odd issue of their DHCP servers. My address includes a DHCP server address, but updating it doesn't really do anything - in March 2001, my IP address shifted from 24.*.*.* to 65.*.*.*.
Geez - I guess that's one way to keep people from using NAT behind their cable modem.
Someone moderate +1 troll to the poster of the article!
I just went through the switch over this morning and it took hours. The Rogers transition help pages were confusing. For email there were only instructions for Outlook express v 4 - 6. Outlook xp/2000, Eudora and Netscape were 'not supported'. In the end it would not accept my mail password but the mail showed up anyways. I was not impressed.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Charter Communications, aka That OTHER Evil Empire(TM), already switched us over from @Home to Charter Pipeline. So far, so good. It's up, anyway. Thanks to OpenBSD, I don't need their interesting but useless Weendoze software. BTW, if you decide to use their software, don't. You can't uninstall it save via reinstalling Winduhs.
... R.I.P.
Unfortunately, DSL was not much of an option since I'm 18,000 feet from the CO. Oh, well. It still beats dial-up.
@Home
It's a very dark ride.
I had customers calling into today saying they couldnt reach excite mobile mail on the phones. After some checking, mobile.excite.com says they discontinued thier service. They didnt even let me know so I could remove the connection.
Date sent: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 19:50:28 -0500 (EST)
Dear Cox @ Home customer:
Recently, you were informed that our high-speed Internet partner - Excite @ Home - filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection. We recognize that this situation may have caused you some concern about the future of your service. Rest assured, we are taking all the necessary steps to provide continued reliable high-speed Internet service to our customers ... now and in the future.
We are deeply committed to providing you with a quality high-speed Internet service. For several months, we have been hard at work creating a new Cox- managed network to better serve you. There are many benefits to directly managing our own network, such as:
* Easier, more streamlined customer service experience.
* Enhanced network performance.
* Ability to bring you the latest in cutting-edge technology and product features.
In the weeks ahead, we'll continue to keep you informed and share more details of our exciting plans. For more information, please visit www.cox.com/moreinfo.
We thank you for being a valued Cox customer.
Sincerely, Cox Communications
Step 2: Merge with MediaOne and control 30% of cable.
Step 3: Get the FCC to withdraw the cable ownership caps set during MediaOne merger
Step 4: Buy out the number one broadband company, despite protests from stockholders that AT&T (being the majority stockholder) had set itself up to pay very little for Excite@Home.
Go with Spiretech. They are independant and provide good service. There terms of use are acceptable (servers ok so long as they don't abuse the net in general). You get a shell account with SSH!! Linux UNIX ok. They did not flinch at IRIX even.
Heh, tell them 'ddingus' sent you, I get a free month!
Seriously they are way better than the MSN / Qwest mess.
Blogging because I can...
Rogers @Home users should be a-ok - since I last met with their network engineering people (a couple months ago) they were pushing through with their contingency plans in case Excite @Home went boom. Now that it's apparently happening, they're more or less ready. Of course, the changeover hasn't been flawless, but a) what do you expect when you try to set up e-mail for 422,000 broadband users, about 1-1.5million accounts in six weeks? It's simply not a very easy thing to do. Also, having all 422,000 activate their e-mail accounts within a day or two isn't something you'd expect to go flawlessly. We spoke with their VP of Network Ops and Engineering before the changeover on the phone, and he said there are still several bugs to be ironed out (apparently the requiring the FROM: header to be @rogers.com isn't gonna stay around).
The new news service right now is kinda sucky, but again, what do you expect when you go from Excite@Home, who have at least 30 (our guess) news peers to a server with only one. But again, I expect that'll change and improve with time.
As for the IP services, Rogers is running their own DHCP/DNS/TFTP servers now - and almost all of the network is using these new servers now. Basically, there are three DHCP/DNS/etc clusters, with each modem be dualhomed to two at any given point. If one fails or is unavailable, the modems will be rehomed to the remaining two. Each cluster is made up of three Sun E420 (I believe) machines, with two production servers and one hot failover. DHCP is no longer run using the CRXXXX client-id number, but is now entirely MAC address based (hence your IP's reverse DNS lookup now containing your MAC address).
As for the 'net access, Rogers has purchased a 5Gbps transit link from Teleglobe in NYC, and they said they are currently negotiating peering with other providers.
So in a nutshell, if @Home goes bye bye on Friday, Rogers users are pretty well covered (although I'm sure there will still be some problems - there ALWAYS are).
----
Bryan Samis
http://www.thesamis.net
The Rogers transition instructions (for me at least) are wrong. The demo shows the POP server as just "pop", SMTP as "smtp" and NNTP as "nntp" but are missing the remainder, which in my case was ".ym.phub.net.cable.rogers.com" with the "ym" being whatever router you are on. The intro password is the last 8 digits of your account number. Neither of these handy tidbits were on the transition instructions, so they may have just configured the servers to allow mail retrieval without a password to alleviate four days without being able to get through to their tech. support.
Why does it always have to be like this?
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
Yeah, water's a lot harder to manage, and the stakes are higher when it fails. When's the last time people died because their internet connection wasn't properly maintained?
Internet would be a breeze compared to water and power.
apparently you don't care about ping time.
burn the computers. go back to the abacus.
Yup, I've got the lancity one as well, and the transition site for that modem went through FOUR seperate and complete revisions. The one up now has proper instructions.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
http://www.home.net still has a link to sign up for internet service. I bet you can get a great deal for only 3 more days.
This is a money grab. AT&T had negotiated a selling price with @Home though this didn't mean much since @Home went bankrupt. The bondholders of @Home's debt want more money for this asset. The bondholders "turning off" the network is an attempt to raise the selling price, though if they keep everyone off the network for too long then their asset loses all its value. Kinda like a rolling blackout, but this time for network resources.
I have an account with Cogeco cable in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, and they had us switch our e-mail addresses about a month ago to user@cogeco.ca. I notice now when I do a traceroute I see only one router with a .home.net name (there used to be many) and the traffic then goes through a bunch of routers in Teleglobe.net starting in Toronto then getting to New York by way of Chicago. So, other than that one router (in Ontario) which may not even be owned by @Home anymore, we seem to be completely independent of Excite@Home. Service seems about the same as always: great when it's up, down a bit too often.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Did it ever occur to you, you little shit ball, that if conditions during a war ever got so bad that the DOT had to take over a road that maybe just maybe your little petty concerns just wouldn't fucking matter?
You're right. Silly, stupid, me. I care about things like rights, freedoms, and civil liberties. Instead, you took an example and missed the point. The 'net is government done right. Do the research, build the proof of concept, incubate it, and then get the hell out of the way.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
It is a high stakes game of chicken but the problem for the bondholders is that AT&T probably win. The fact is that the @Home network is unlikely to be worth even what AT&T are offering for it. Depreciation of Internet hardware is pretty devastating and at the moment there is a massive glut of fibre capacity.
It might well cost AT&T double to replace the @home network but the system they would build would be a completely modern network with growing room, not a three year old network that was at the limit. If the @home network was so great they would not be in bankrupcy, they could simply sit on their existing sunk cost investment and send whatever return they could to the bond holders. Their problem is that they need to invest a massive slice of additional cash just to keep going.
I doubt that the outcome will be catastrophic for customers. There are plenty of Internet backbone providers and connecting up is not a massive issue. AT&T probably owns the lines into the backbone provider data centers in any case.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I talked to a few people at Comcast back when Excite was having trouble earlier this year, and they hinted at the fact that there wouldn't be a problem if Excite went under.
Later, when I called to complain about the newly-imposed bandwidth caps, they hinted at the fact that they would be offering different service plans in the near future, and mentioned Excite's financial troubles numerous times.
Also, if you notice they have had their own portal (www.icomcast.net) up and running for some time now.
Lastly, they just upped their cable modem service rates--from what I'm told by people at Comcast again, its to cover new operating expenses (read: no more Excite).
So, with any luck, Comcast users shouldn't experience many, if any, problems with service. All signs are pointing to them keeping service afloat.
Man, you have got that right! I spent about 20+ ?!? hours on the phone with lame Qwest technicians trying to get the ATM stuff right. Had a friend switch over recently though and his order went right through. He only had about a day of downtime compared to my week!
Expect some problems with the switch, but none after it is done!
Blogging because I can...
> First of all, the government is the last entity I think of when I consider responsive, efficient organizations.
Never went to the university, did you?
Or tried to get support for COTS software?
> In times of war the DOT has the authority to take over whatever roads the military needs to move troops/supplies.
When Ashcroft decides the "emergency" requires him to cut off your internet access, you're gonna get snipped whether the gummit is your ISP or not.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I will grudgingly agree with you that some regulation may be required for equitable access. There are some critical differences though. First, broadband access to the home, beyond ISDN, has only been available for less than five years now. I haven't dug up the answer, but I have to believe that telegraphs and telephones were around a lot longer before they acheived the penetration that home broadband has in its short lifetime.
I agree with you that the market is still too immature to see whether or not intervention would help or hinder it.
Living in a rural area comes with its drawbacks, however. You're off the sewer line, off the gas line, deal with flaky phone lines, etc. Simply because you're out of reach of the CO and your cable company doesn't offer cable modem does NOT mean that you're without broadband. Dedicated circuits have a longer signalling lenght, repeaters can be put on a DSL line, and there's always satellite internet. Not ideal, but you live in the styx, you make some sacrifices re: the societal umbilicus.
About the unserved businesses, businesses don't run on cable modems or DSL. They run either colo or dedicated lines. One thing you started in on, but didn't explore, is that it's going to take universal access before the net becomes the medium everyone (or at least, the commercial everyone) wants it to become. One day, the Sears catalog will be no more. That day will only come when there truly is universal broadband access.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
Never went to the university, did you?
Actually, I did. Largest single campus in the US at the time as well. I'm glad I didn't receive student aid--Seeing the line stretching 1/4 mile from the office was amusing for someone not standing in it.
When Ashcroft decides the "emergency" requires him to cut off your internet access, you're gonna get snipped whether the gummit is your ISP or not.
It's a lot more difficult for John to go and cut off all the backbone providers today than it would be if the FCC owned the backbone. For all the complaining that went around when the NSF backed out of the net, I have to say it's a far more interesting, lively, and safer place for it.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
Not only did I get the same letter from AT&T yesterday, I also got a Rate Increase notification! Some service.
BTW, this is the second time since July that AT&T has raised prices by about $5/month for TV/internet service without adding any service. At least when MediaOne raised prices, it only happened once a year and they would add cable channels or something.
Now if only RCN were installing in my town (Medford, MA), I would benefit from cable competition as Arlington and Somerville do.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
For what it's worth I got an e-mail several weeks back from Cox saying basically they'd be taking over from @home and run the network themselves.
We shall see I suppose.
Ok, apparently neither mozilla nor w3m from my machine could connect, but I could using lynx from an alternate location.
Here's the scoop from http://www.cox.com/moreinfo:
Following you will find some information to address questions you might have about the email communication that you recently received from us.
Q1. When will you be switching my service?
A1. Cox is creating its own managed network to enable it to ensure the quality and reliability of your service. This transition will be made before June 2002, however we have not yet finalized specific dates for each community
we serve. We will continue to keep you informed on our progress and will do everything we can to give you as much advance notice as possible when the time comes to transition to the new Cox high speed Internet service.
Q2. Do I have to change?
A2. Yes, our partnership with @Home will be ending. Once the Cox-managed network is ready, all customers who currently have the Cox@Home service will be transitioned over to the new Cox-managed network. We think you will be pleased with the new service. By managing all elements of our high speed Internet service, we will be in a much better position to control the quality of our service and deliver greater customer satisfaction. We will make every effort to make this transition as smooth as possible.
Q3. What do I have to do right now?
A3. There is nothing for you do right now. At the appropriate time, Cox will provide you with all of the information and tools you need to smoothly convert your service to our new Cox-managed high speed Internet service.
Q4. How will I be affected?
A4. Since we are in the process of finalizing the service and its features, we don't have specific information to share with you at this time. We assure you that your Cox-managed service will include the most popular features you
currently enjoy, as well as some additional benefits.
Q5. Is my new service going to be comparable to my existing service?
A5. It is our goal to provide you with high speed Internet service that is comparable to or better than your existing Cox@Home service. In fact, by offering our own Cox high speed Internet service, we will have a much better abilit
y to manage our network performance and provide the high-quality customer service and technical support our customers have grown to expect from Cox.
Q6. Will I get any new features?
A6. In addition to providing you with the features that you currently enjoy with your Cox @Home service, there will also be some new features and benefits associated with the new Cox-managed service. We are currently finalizing the details and we will share this exciting information with you in advance.
Q7. Is my email address going to change? If so, when?
A7. Since we are still finalizing the details of our Cox-managed high speed Internet service, we don't have any specific information to share with you at this time. You will be notified in advance about any changes to your service, so that you may have time to prepare for this change as necessary. Please know that we understand that an email address change is significant, and we will make every effort to make any service transition as smooth as possible.
Q8. So will you start offering other ISPs?
A8. We are in the process of testing the technical feasibility of offering multiple ISPs over our broadband network. Once this testing is complete, we will then determine the feasibility of rolling out multiple ISPs on a wider basis.
It really makes me wonder if they consider the port blocking on 80 and 25 to be a "feature" to "improve" "service". The funny thing is that I know someone else across the street w/ Cox@Home who DOESN'T have those ports blocked. And I wasn't even running a web server, while he is. Go figure.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
I have a Pac Bell SBC Internet connection ~ 2.5 years now. Been workin' 24x7, very few hassles. Static IP, no passwords or anything, and very reliable, 1.5 Mb down and ~300Kb up - definitely no complaints at $50/mo!
I am just amazed that with all this demand, how could these companies just not be making any money?
SBC raised their rates for new accounts a while back by $10/mo, but didn't change any existing account's prices at all.
-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Regardless what you think of @home users generally, it is a great tragedy for millions of people to lose internet access. It is at least as bad as millions of people losing phone and mail service at once. Wireheads like us should reasonably feel it is even more tragic.
Something is wrong with our models and system when infrastructure is that fragile.
It's human nature to complain. You hear about "so much trouble" because those are the most vocal group(s). There are hundreds of thousands of happy customers but they aren't out saying so. (Well, maybe not hundreds of thousands of Excite@home customers, but you get the idea.)
And then there's also the whole "what? we have to make money?!" business plans to blame as well. It would appear, basic economics is no longer required to get an MBA -- you cannot sell goods or services for less than it costs to create them and expect to stay in business.
Re raising prices,
take your pick, at least you still have broadband. If they didn't raise their prices you'd most likely be on a 56k right now... Perhaps excite@home should have done that instead of going belly-up.
If God gave us curiosity
This even works if you use a linux system as a dhcp system -- I modified the resolv.conf and then doctored pump to not mess with my modified file.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
It's not that the loss of Excite isn't causing any confusion, but for both Rogers@Home and Cogeco@Home, customers have been contacted weeks ago about the change (snail mail, television commercials, e-mails, and even phone calls). Rogers and Cogeco will simply be changing over to @rogers.com and @cogeco.com respectively, and, as long as no one has their system set up as a static IP (which it shouldn't), the user only needs to change their e-mail program of the change (and maybe reupload their website to the new domain).
The sad part is, Excite is definitely being a big dink about all of this. I had several usernames from Cogeco, and then
I moved to a Rogers-controlled area. Everything was fine until now - unfortunately, since Rogers wasn't the original creator of the usernames, they can't transfer it to @rogers.com - and since Cogeco can't get Excite to transfer them to Rogers, I'm rather stuck. Fine, I can just get Rogers to create some accounts for me when everything's settled, but Excite could have simply deleted the accounts and then Rogers could have had free access to them - but no, they froze the accounts, not allowing anyone to touch it. Ugh. Ah well, things will be MUCH better now that Excite is over with... at least from my end of things.
I'd say that the ISPs that don't say anything are the ones to worry most about. Unfortunately BellSouth is incredibly lax in upgrading their circuits for DSL (a sudden slowdown in their efforts after the FCC ruled that they had to allow other ISPs access to DSL service), so if Insight's service dies, I'm screwed. I do have a dialup account and my NAT router is configured to access it, but I don't want to have to share three computers on a 56k connection.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Access to the internet is a privelege, not a right
It's neither. It's a product you buy and pay for, and is subject to whatever contract that was agreed upon at the time of purchase, and the UCC laws regarding contracts.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
FWIW, I've had no problems with Qwest providing my DSL circuit. Obviously, don't choose an ISP that sucks, but that's the nice thing about DSL (compared to cable) - you have a choice.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
This is a MUCH bigger annoyance and inconvenience than you're allowing for.
I'm a new dad and I don't need this interruption in my life to take addional time away from my family. My @home connection has greatly INCREASED the amount of time I have for the things that matter with "a real person" and "social skills". I rely on my always-on @home net connection to save me time with banking, shopping, parenting advice, medical information. The implications of this are wide-ranging -- my accounts all over the place send email to my @home address, and if Cox doesn't handle any changes gracefully, it's gonna make things miserable for me. Not to mention that I'll have to explain to my non-techie wife why her grad-school profs, friends, family, co-workers, and students have to go change their address books.
Cox better look long and hard at buying and keeping the @home domain!
It's not the end of the world if you lose connectivity for a while. You will survive.
Yes, no doubt we'll survive, but time is scarce, now more than ever, and I don't need this additional burden. What a headache.
>Access to the internet is a privelege, not a right
Yeah? So is a car. And if you woke up tomorrow and it was stolen how fucked would you be? I live 40 minutes from work and we have almost nonexistant mass transit. Sure, you'd figure out how to function but for a while your life would be in turmoil.
Sorry that you have some kind of vendetta against geeks, but you need to separate that from the issue at hand. With very little notice, a lot of users are going to lose what could be an important communication tool. Your response doesn't even address the idea of lost receipts and online bill payment. And let's not forget how much cheaper AIM is for talking to my cousin in TX than a long-distance call. It's not just pervs and space cadets that will be affected here.
Before this morning, I received exactly one notice from Comcast and it said everything was A-OK. Now they're telling me to expect to lose service for a while starting as soon as 2 days from now. Thankfully I never trusted them and didn't use the email account much. Unfortunately, the copper in my area only supports 24.4 so I'm hosed for doing research on the net.
Don't deride a lifestyle choice that you don't agree with and try to pass it off as a valid argument.
"Can I say you're my lovepuppy?" Founding member of SODAMNHOTT
SpamCop is a sorta good idea, but the implementation sucks. It's no wonder why @Home black-holed it, all those automated spam notifications for spams that weren't spams must have been driving their guys nuts (not that their guys had much sanity in the first place, otherwise they wouldn't have been working @Home).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.