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@Home Network Approaching Shutdown
David Harris writes: "A bankruptcy court ruled today that the @Home network will be shutdown at midnight, unless the company reaches new deals with its cable partners and creditors. The decision is a victory for bondholders, owed $750 million by Excite@Home, whose motion asked the court to shutdown the network on grounds that AT&T's $307 million offer to acquire @Home's broadband network is not adequate and fair value for the network could only be found if a shutdown was forced." Read about it on excite.com, while you can. CNet has a good analysis of where things stand. 45% of the cable modem users in North America! Ouch.
And probably last post since I'm an @home subscriber. My e-mail is already toast!
When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
Glad to be an AT&T customer =P
I won't be able to read Slashdot tommorow!
*goes and collapses on the floor*
I love ya Man But NOT over the dial up I will be stuck with.
I have adelphia cable, but is there a chance that they get their access via excite@home.com or something? Do these guys resell too?
I just want to make sure that I don't lose the already poor net access that I have.
http://monkeyserver.com --- weeeeee
I just hope they don't try to charge me next month if they do shut down...
The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. -- John Gilmore
vikas
the bell tolls for you!
I love comcast servince the website is claiming that the service will not be disrupted. But there is a backup plan....I hope they get backup and running as quickly as possible
I've got cable through Shaw@Home here in Canada. We've been told that we are ok but I guess I'm about to find out the hard way. I mean with 45% about to go down it's hard for me to assume that I'm safe. Especially here in Canada - aren't we the last to be helped out with this stuff?
(just kidding! Canada rules!)
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
I bet the Edonkey will be flying tonight with all that freed up bandwidth!!
Oh wait, all them files are hosted by cable-modem users? Damn it!
Wouldn't shutting down the service be a bad move for both sides? The bond holders would be left with what could be scavenged out of a sale of the company while the cable companies are left with a lot of unhappy customers. I think at minimum a short term deal will be struck so that they can continue to negotiate.
Someone grab a screen shot for the dot-bomb museum, please.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Time to buy an 802.11b adapter and use the university next door's conncetion! I hope Comcast can work something out by what I assume is 12 ET 11 CT...
Wait... Is this only Excite @Home? Or does this include AT&T @Home service?
"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased. Thus we refute entropy" - Spider Robinson
The thing that trips me out is that I paid @home in advance through the end of
January. I hope Cox doesn't go down but I am definately going to be asking for
service interruption remebursments.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
starts looking in the back side of computer boxes to figure our which one has the modem installed
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
AT&T is somewhat better, but they're still on the bad end of the scale. Let's hope these users end up with more responsible ISPs.
Time to starting looking for a new provider.
--locust
I do feel bad because I have a lot of friends who don't have land-based phone lines anymore. They switched to cable for the computer and cell phones for phone use. If their service lapses, they're going to be SOL.
I don't see any reason why Excite won't kill the service tonight. They've got nothing to lose, since they're already bankrupt. Shutting off service just stems the bleeding. The other companies are going to get hurt by this, and it's going to put high-speed internet access in a bad light.
But, I guess this is what happens when one company controls the lion's share of internet access. Back in the day of local ISP's, one of them going under wasn't the end of the world. Can you imagine what would happen if AOL or MSN turned off their service? (and yes, I'm bloody well expecting a smartaleck response there).
I'm just glad I never got rid of my dial up access. I have the feeling my friends are going to be coming over to get their net fix during the outage.
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
10 MD
However, all is not lost. There are still many options for us:
This is going to be aggravating for all of us, but the ability to survive adversity separates the men from the boys. I wish you all luck this weekend getting your new service working.
~wally
Well, as soon as they go dark their value will be zero. Of course, as far as some of their customers are concerned, their value is zero now...
I've got Cox@Home, as I understand it Cox is using @Home as a backend does anyone know how the shutdown of Excite@Home effects the other @Home services. I think that a few of the cable service providers also have @Home and they had annonced that they weren't happy and that they felt free to walk away. So does this only apply to direct Excite@Home or do others of us have big problems as well????
Most Charter @Home subscribers have received a CD with mysterious contents and been told to "install it." Looks like it has Outlook and a Charter-branded IE and some other mysterious software. A guy at Charter called me to make sure I received it and knew what to do -- he said my IPs shouldn't change so I'm not going to install anything until my connection gets bungled up.
Kudos to Charter if everything actually works tonight (and I'll be issuing a Buy recommendation on CHTR as well).
There will be less people for me to fuck up in RtCW tonight. Fuckers. I was gonna fuck some dumbfucks up tonight.
Maybe this will attenuate the NIMBDA attacks from cable-connected Windows PCs.
I dont see how shutting something down is a victory for anyone. So they owe 750 million bucks. When they stop getting 45% of the cable modem users ~$50 a month, they are still gonna be 750 million in debt, with no income. I dont understand. Of course, IANAA (i am not an accountant)
Don't Tread on Me
Customers of AT&T cable currently utilize the Excite@Home network for at least email and web hosting. I am not sure if my actual service is going to be affected but I will certainly lose my email and webspace from @Home. The GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE part of this is that I have yet to hear from either AT&T or Excite@Home about how this will affect my cable service. I sure hope I can get DSL now!
-- Find the Truth...
Does this affect @Home users in canada? I have heard from different people that it doesn't but I am skeptical. My ISP recently switched to its own server so i'm good.
First they limit us to 128k upload, then they threaten to pull the plug.
DSL is looking better every day.
Look, I just made you read my signature.
I'm a bit confused... if you signed up through AT&T for @Home access, does that mean you're losing your service with excite's expiration? My parents have AT&T@Home service, and I'm worried that this'll stop the flow of virally infected email that lets me know my Dad's still alive.
DSL is limited on who can receive access and the largest cable provider is shutting down. Waht is going to be the boster that puts broadband where dialup is today? Wireless, Satalite? I hate to see this but for Gods sake if you run a company your not going to help yourself by anouncing way in advanced "..ohh yeah well we may have to shut down cause we are loosing too much money.." investers seem to dislike that!
If you are an AT&T customer that used to have mediaone/roadrunner, you aren't going to get shut down. AT&T sent me some snail mail about possibly loosing the "Excite@Home homepage" which is what they want to make your default homepage when they install. I can't say I care at all...
Twostep
There are 10 different types of people in this world... those who understand binary, and those who don't.
Is this the same as Shaw@Home that is availible in Canada?
This actually sounds strange. The bondholders want
the system shutdown? That would make their investment worthless. The partner cable companies
would declare breach of contract and seize the
customer accounts. joehiband@home becomes
joehiband@comcast.com . The bondholders get nothing. Comcast must be drooling that the bondholders are idiot enough to do this. How hard is it to route traffic from the cable office to
MAE East/West and setup some mail servers and
DNS routers on a Unix platform? Pretty easy stuff.
In the end, I have to ask, who are the bondholders? Wasn't @home a consortium of cable companies? Do they owe the money to themselves?
Perhaps one company owes the most and is going to
get screwed the most.
If they were a little more reasonable about their terms of service, they could have charged a little more. I would gladly have paid a small fee for the opportunity to run my own web server, or to talk to tech support people who didn't think my problems were due to not running windows. I moved to speakeasy because I wanted a more freedom about what to do with my computers and didn't want to be treated like a clueless luser by people who naturally assume that if it is not windows, it is broken
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Seems your @Home hosted pages might go down indefinately but AT&T claims no connectivity outtages no matter what happens. Details here: http://help.broadband.att.com/faq.jsp?content_id=1 118
I've got excite@home broadband service but I'm not too worried. If they do shut down I'll just do like I did when I decided not to get cable TV - hook up some speaker wire as an antenna and use the internet the old fashioned way.
Yes, this also means you. Unless you're and ATT Worldnet subscriber, but then you aren't on cable anyway.
From the article, it looks like Cox customers are up a tree, and Comcast customers are totaly screwed. How about the AT&T customers? It mentions that they are going to try to migrate them to existing network, but I'd be curious to see how many are already on said network, and how many are looking at outages.
Anyone here have a breakdown?
I'm slightly concerned as my parents are on AT&T@home, and if something goes wrong, I'll have to go and find something else for them, but also, I wonder just how many people will be turned off of broadband because of this. Cable was really being pushed as the way to go for broadband, and in this area, @home is the only circus in town...
Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?
Now that a very large player in the home broadband business is stopping service to so many customers, this will cause people to have to yet again rely on the local monopoly phone companies to get internet services. Perhaps broadband is dying. Unless other companies have access to the cable networks or wireless and satellite gain popularity, the cost will continue to be prohibitive for a lot of people.
We have 4 million users .. if each one sent me $100, we'd have more than AT&T's bid. And for $250, we'd have a billion, which not only covers @home's debt, but is likely WAY more than AT&T wants to spend.
Would you pay $250 for a share of your own cablenet company?
-B
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
One day a crowded network with plenty of users. The next day a competitive market struggling just to keep going. Granted, the causes of these things are different, but the result is likely to be the same. Pull the plug and the majority will not be coming back...
mp3's are only for those with bad memories
Certainly they are not taking in the entire $39.95 each month. The local provider (Cox Cable in my town) obviously takes a portion of that montly bill, but Excite! must still be receiving a ton of money each month.
Moreover, they have a monopoly. In my neighborhood I don't have a choice between Cox and Roadrunner. It's either Cox@Home or a phone modem (we're too far away from the CO for DSL). So they can't be losing customers since there's no compitition. And even if their competition is DSL then their competitors are going out of business as well (whatever happened to Covad?)
Sombody's got to be taking some money home with them at night.
has had plans for this day for over a year now. They have their own OC12s minimum in each town. They have already switched email, and service to their own network the only inconvience was that my email address changed. Cogeco has been a great ISP, and I'll stick with them, OC12s for a town with 127,000 is pretty good, many ISPs in NY don't have close to that bandwidth.
This is a Canadian company, I doubt many American companies have made plans, from the expierence I've had with US companies, its customers last. I guess its just easier to blame it on @home and sit by and do nothing though.
If you have a service with "@home" in the name, IT EFFECTS YOU!
Example, you are a subcriber to the "foo@home" cable Internet service, in Anywhere, North America, you are among us that are f***ed.
why was this modded down? it seems like a completely resonable post to me.
Here is the info page for Comcast@home users
http://www.comcastonline.com/info.htm
No Sig
Since a lot of spammers are on @home, this will open up bandwidth. And various files probably have been mirrored around the world.
So the end result is that is that the internet load level will drop substantially. Even if all those guys go to dialup with Juno or get high speed via AOL.
Looks like the next few days are going to be great for surfing if you are not affected. Although I wonder how many porn sites are going to go down when Excite collapses?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I wonder how this will affect kazaa traffic. Most of it probably comes out of homes anyways.
So they force the service to be taken down so AT&T or the like bids more. The creditors don't want to lose 4,000,000 times $16/month (that portion of the fees that go to Excite) but they figure this way they can pressure AT&T to up their bid.
Let's draw an analogy between this and telephone service, or any other public utility (water, power, etc.). If 45 % of the country's telephone subscriber's were going to lose service, govt would be up in arms and rattling cages, dropping stiumlus packages left and right.
:)
Granted, bandwidth is not a crucial as say water, power, and heat, but to some businesses, it could be make or break. Scary...
Wonder how my EDonkey traffic will be this weekend?
" @Home Network Approaching Shutdown
Posted by michael on Friday November 30, @04:57PM
from the so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-code-red dept. "
my response when it happens:
" Slashdot Shuts Down
Posted by wifflefan on Friday November 30, @04:57PM
from the so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-jerks dept. "
Geez.
w|f
Why in the hell do you have DirecTV if you're so proud of not having a TV???
NICE for a change tonight after midnight.
The problem with the residential broadband market is that it relies on users not using much of the bandwidth available to them. But the people that most flock to broadband connections are those that want bandwidth.
I'm fighting with Cox Road Runner (Fairfax, VA) about policy changes. Although not currently prohibited, it appears that they are trying to pressure residential users that run their own (passworded) FTP servers, Telnet servers, mail, and web servers into buying Cox Business Internet services. One problem: My 1.5mbps download pipe costs $250 on business vs. $40 on residential. Odd too, how they are only discussing these server limitations now that they have a high-priced "business service" to offer.
Road Runner, @home, and other cable modem services need to start pricing more realistically. If someone wants just "basic" service for e-mail and web pages, then give them 512K PPPOE so that they can't run servers. And charge them $40 a month for it. If someone wants to run servers for personal use or needs a bit more bandwidth to dowload Linux and *BSD ISO images, give them 1.5MB, 1 static IP and charge them $90. But don't try to make residential users pay for business class services that cost as much as a car payment! People just won't make the jump from $40 to $250 -- unless they really are running businesses.
Who will be most upset by the @home outage?
Unfortunately, some of us don't have any other option available to us, and can't afford to be quite as righteous as you are. It would be great if they would police spam better, but I'll take an ISP with spam over no ISP at all any day.
It sucks, but I don't have the power to change it, unless you can give me the several thousand dollars it will take to have a clean dry pair delivered to my apartment. (Lots of load coils and unterminated runs on my loop)
I wish I was as lucky as you, sir, and had options and the time to say "good riddance" to those who don't.
Thanks.
Cox has already stated (check Q6) that it will credit its customers for the lost time. I would be willing to bet that all providers will do the same, given the situation.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Some of friends who got cable modem thru @Home were laughing at me, telling me to catch up with the rest of the world, blah blah blah...
I guess I just got the last laugh, eh?
The bondholders lose. If a company goes bankrupt, the shareholders give the company to the bondholders. The bondholders become the owners.
The local pipe owners (the cable companies) made the mistake of going with ATHOME. Since all that people
want is access to the internet and email, there's little @home provides except maybe a brand name.
This brand is not worth it. The bondholders have been swindled. Best bet for them is to let @home go under and sue the cable companies for fraud.
Yes. The way it works is alot like DSL. You get the physical line through the carrier (For DSL, it would be your local telephone company, such as Qwest, Verizon, Bell South, etc. For Cable, it would be AT&T, Cox, Comcast, etc.) but you get the internet service through the ISP. For DSL, you generally have your choice of ISPs (Most telcos have their own, plus EarthLink, DirecTV, and lots of local ISPs offer DSL service.) For Cable, you only have one choice. If you have AT&T cable, your only ISP choice is Excite@Home. They brand the service as AT&T@Home, Cox@Home, Comcast@Home, etc.. based on your cable company.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Without Internet access, families will spend time together again. Maybe even go outside to shovel snow on the driveway together.
I got this from MediaCom (AT&T partner) e-mail.
AT&T Broadband has been building their own high-speed cable Internet service and has been communicating contingency plans to move customers to that service. This information was intended for AT&T@Home customers in communities that are served by AT&T Broadband.
Looks like people under the AT&T umbrella may only be offline for a short while at the worst...
Cable modems and NICs? @junk? :)
4 million? Try 500,000. Most of whom are trolls, slackers, lamers, and flamers anyway.
He's a renowned troll, and he's just trying to up his karma again so he can moderate so truly good posts down, and post trolling bull-stink at a +1 posting bonus. You're new here, aren't ya?
NOT!
Metricom rejects a $20 mil bid from Aeire(sp?) while it's still running. They shutdown the network. A month later Aeire makes a $8mil bid, and Metricom takes it.
If the bondholders think that this is going to get them a better bid, they'd better wake up and get a dose of reality.
A network with paying subscribers and an active staff is worth more than a pile of bypassed network segments and empty offices.
go to your school and use your computers there..
if you are a TA, why don't you have an office?
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
I work in the digital loop carrier industry, and the technology exists to extend DSL broadband to people outside of the normal DSL range of a mile or so from the phone company's Central Office. The company I work for makes a box that allows phone companies to send all their voice and data over fiber (or copper, or wireless) to a remote terminal, and then it's from THAT point that the 1 mile limitation kicks in.
The problem for John Q. Dialup is that the phone companies are just too big and slow to put this technology out in the field. Our stuff is just now going through testing in SBC, but how long it will be before a large number of people can live 10 miles from the Central Office and still get DSL is anybody's guess.
Right now, many of the people with the best broadband opportunities are actually rural customers! This technology I'm talking about is pretty attractive to smaller Mom & Pop phone companies because due to the low initial cost of this particular product.
I got lucky: my aparment complex just happens to fall into one of SBC Ameritech's DSL sweet spots. I think when I get around to getting a house, I'm going to be looking very closely at the DSL availability!
I live in NJ, and the way it works is Comcast acts like a monopolly.
I pay $85 per month for internet, and cable service for my TV, and I do not have a single premium channel. In fact I just was notified today that rates have gone up another 6% or so.
If Comcast shuts me off tonight, and thats who effectively would be pulling the plug, I will be on the horn tomorrow to have Comcast take every cable they have out of this house ASAP.
I will then call a satellite provider and have them provide me TV service.
I will then patiently wait for DSL and keep an eye on stellite service. Perhaps I will even get a T1 and share with my neighbors.
I am up to here with Cable arrogance. They are the only technology related thing that costs more over time for less service.
I'm still working on a clever footer.
That this end of the Excite business is profitable and that bad investments are dragging down Excite@home?
...
On the ScreenSavers last night Leo Laporte stated that an insider told him that the service is extremely profitable and that the cable services are waiting for Excite to tank to take over the service for themselves.
Who knows for sure
Well i have ATT cable. But I do not have ATT@Home. I have ATT MediaOne. So i guess i am safe. Ha!
I have att@home, they send my a letter saying that if @home shuts down, that they have thier own network ready to go. They said I would just need to reboot and i will get assigned a new ip. Then I will just need to configure my mail. So maybe att customers are lucky.
After the shutdown of the @home cable service, the internet speeds increased 6 times faster!
I should have stated it ...
...
.. For every $9.00 spent for excite they now have $0.01.
:-P
For every $1.00 they spent for Excite
They now have 0.00149 cents of it left.
OR
Probably go down in history as the biggest internet screw-up there has ever been.
For an extra million I heard disney would have thrown go.com in
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Because, as the subject says, their DSL service rocks. And, as far as I know, DSL has nothing to do with TV. What's your point?
They have been sending notices every few weeks warning of this. Yesterday I received a packet complete with "setup" cd for Charter Pipeline.
A friend has already switched and they seem to be providing the same service. (5$ more expensive).
change me
Well, if their bid fails, I volunteer to help AT&T get rid of the slight $93M difference. ...
These guys have a strange concept of the value of money I reckon
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
As far as I am concerned, it finally looks like abuse@home.come has made good on its promise to terminate the service of the abusers (as well as their other users.. unfortunately). A bit extreme, yes, but at least my machines will have smaller firewall logs!
If it was any other provider, yes, I would sympathise with the other subscribers who will be losing their IP connectivity - however, I have heard enough of the Excite@Home users on Slashdot criticize their own service provider to be able to counter any flames this post may encourage.
As someone who handles all the abuse@ e-mail for a reasonably-sized UK ISP; I have yet to receive any kind of intelligent reply from my counterparts at Excite@Home regarding any of the incidents I have forwarded to them. Complete and utter fuckwits.
You want an open WinGate to launch a DoS at a network of your choice ? - Excite@Home has loads!
You want an open M$ SMTP service to relay your spam through ? - Excite@Home has thousands!
As a part of the global Internet community, they bring more problems than what they are worth to exchange traffic with.
Admittedly, I may only have experienced unfriendly behaviour from a minority of their users, but from I have seen of Excite@Home and their technical competence.. for the rest of you who are still using them as an ISP - I have four words for you....
FIND A BETTER ISP!
Plus, before you whinge and moan that cable is your only broadband option... I will just point out that I am still using dual-channel ISDN (128kbps up/down) and I wouldn't switch to DSL if my telco gave it to me for free... their service is shit but at least they can do ISDN right.
Call me pedantic, but I would rather have a reliable service than a we-are-down-99%-of-the-time-but-we-are-mega-bloody -fast-the-other-1%-of-the-time type of service... which is the kind of impression I have been given from the recounted experiences of most Excite@Home subscribers that I have spoken to.
"Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting wuntime ewwors!" - Elmer Fudd
I understand that they haven't been making money but how do they go for so long without adjusting their plan to make money? Wouldn't they have seen a while back that they are going down the tube?
There are two ways to make a business profitable. Reduce costs or increase income.
I would have thought that a cable service could increase it's monthly charges and still made money. They would have lost some customers to DSL but a lot of customers don't have any other choice. If it takes $60/month/user to make money then that's what has to be charged.
So let's see... As far as broadband goes, we've lost Northpoint, Rhythms, Covad just filed chapter 11. AT&T and Excite(Cox?) just filed chapter 11.
Who is left?
SWBell is my local phone company and they have DSL. Surprise that all their competitors went out of business considering SWBell was providing the lines.
I think we either need to make a concious decision:
A. We don't want to let the phone company sell DSL, and we don't want the Cable company to provide cable access only provide the lines so other companies can resell.
B. We want the phone and cable companies to be the sole providers of the service and the line. We want it to be government regulated to keep us from getting screwed and to set prices.
Personally, I vote for A.
What is everyone else's toughts?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I've never been happier with my 56k...
Username taken, please choose another one.
802.11b with QoS, very funny
Madison, WI users of Bresnan (used to be TCI) Cable's @home service were switched to Charter Pipeline. Here's to hoping that other cable providers were smart enough to get in front of this disaster.
I'd better get to work on downloading alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.* RIGHT NOW.
http://help.broadband.att.com/
appeard to be non-responsive as of 4:45pm CST
lovely....
Cable modems via Cox came to the neighborhood back in August and I quickly signed up and I believe I have a final payment to make on the cable modem purchased.
I just shut off my 2nd line and dial up provider - now it seems that may have been a rash move. Cox has a info page up saying they're going to "negotiate into the night" to set up a stopgap arrangement to keep us online, but I'm pessimistic as it seems that outside of a ridiculous amount of loot deposited to Excite, there's not a lot of incentive to be agreeable.
The judge's commentary really irks me. Yes, for many, the net is not a necessity. But for people like me who rely on it for work and my wife who needs access for school, it is a utility on par with the phones and electricity. It seems that the customer counts last - do these idiots (Excite creditors) think they'll get any more money if there is any lengthy service disruption? I suppose many of us have to take without viable alternatives - here, no DSL is available and the other alternatives (Sprint Broadband, satellite) are unreliable and unsuitable for games and conferencing (according to their own sales brochure material that caused me to cancel an order for those services) - DSL and cable modems (outside of a T1 line) are the only viable options for the home user.
AZspot
The title of this thread is misleading. The judge rulled that Excite@Home CAN shutdown their network, it doesn't mean that it WILL be shutdown. The pressure on ATT to come to a resolution before midnight may be enough to strike a deal.
AT&T already pretty much controls excite at home. I read an article earlier about how AT&T was letting excite @ home rack up operating losses in order that it would go bankrupt and then AT&T could just buy it back up for cheaper than the actual debt was. If anyone else has heard of that, it was several months back that I read that.
I salivate every time I pass by the offices on 101 ...
I forget...are we at war with Eurasia or East Asia?
Man... 45% of cable modem subscribers? I hadn't realised it was quite this big.
Correct me if I am wrong, but weren't these guys supposed to be competing heroically with each other in good free market fashion to benefit the consumer, rather than killing each other off and then dying like dinosaurs? Counting the dead services barely six hours before 45% of the US cable market goes dark, I kinda wonder if that deregulated free market stuff really works.
If anyone else had DONE this to us it'd be a freaking act of war (news flash! bin laden kills 45% of America's cable modem infrastructure in a suicide attack!) but because it was done by free market capitalism we're supposed to nod and go 'well done'? riiiiiight.
I'd say we best be careful at this point, or maybe next year our regular PHONE companies and power utilities will be the ones plunging 45% of the country into darkness- not from terrorist attack, but because they fought in the 'free' market, screwed up, and lost... Imagine this happening to electric power and not cable modem service. It's not unthinkable, all it requires is a certain amount of corporate stupidity, big debt, and a downward spiral. See 'Dilbert' for more details...
You're mostly right, the bondholders are going to get their lumps. But if they think they can't get 32 cents on the dollar than why not go for it. Only a sucker would take the first offer given.
Quote the site:
You may have recently read about issues with Excite@Home's broadband service. Don't worry. Excite.com and the broadband service are operated completely separately. Whatever you may hear about Excite@Home broadband, cable or ISP will have no affect on this site. You will continue to enjoy the same great content and personalized services. In fact, we're adding more fun and useful services to make Excite even better.
A burnrate of 6 million per week is not good.
What's wrong with that? If they've got 4 million customers at $40/month (pulled that out of my ass because it makes for simple math) they're bringing in $40million per week. 40-6=34.
Obviously, that's obviously much simpler than by tr real economic situation but still...
I just read the article on news.com which discusses this ruling but it seemed to make clear two things:
1) that the parties must go back to the bargaining table
2) that the service being disconnected was unlikely
What it sounds like happened is that the judge said they can cut the contracts but there is nothing right now saying affirmatively that the service will be shut off. Basically this just means it is legal for excite to cancel the existing contracts so that they can re-negotiate them.
So I don't think excite is out yet...
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Any guesses?
Hey, if your looking for a cheap alternative to BroadBand. Check out:
Prism Access, Inc.
Offering First Month Free for dial-up
signups with proof of former @home or equiv. membership!!!
(Note, this may look like a shamless advertising attempt, but these are friends of mine, and could
use the business..)
Time for a Congressional bailout.
P.S. It's for the children...
That is all.
I had Excite@Home as my ISP for a couple of months. They had the World's Worst Customer Service(SM).
More info:http://www.geocities.com/tarahertz/isps-who-s uck.html
Good riddance!
While I'm not in favor the government regulating anything the private sector can do better, it seems clear that the Internet is a piece of infrastructure at least as critical as the power grid, road network, or water system. All these industries have had, or continue to have, some level of government intervention in continuing their operation.
We can't go back to the pre-wired world, anymore than we could go back to a world without roads. What if your local road construction company declared bankruptcy and you suddenly were unable to drive anywhere because all the roads shut down at midnight? It's a good parallel...
If the private sector can't manage the Information Superhighway, maybe the public sector (i.e. Federal Government) ought to take an interest in maintaining it.
(yes, I know there are some downsides...but I'd like to here the opinions of some other people on just what those might be :)
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
Bankruptcy Judge Thomas Carlson said Redwood City-based ExciteAtHome could reject its existing contracts with the cable companies as early as 3 a.m. EST Saturday, when their contracts expire.
That makes no sense. excite now has permission to "reject" the contracts that are "expiring" on the same day. Isn't that how it's always worked? If a contract expires, it is not valid again until both sides agree to the terms of a new one?
Am I just really stupid?
Joseph?
Second of all, I did do the research and I was too far to get reliable DSL access. Thus, I chose cable.
Maybe even go outside to shovel snow on the driveway together.
Where is this "outside" of which you speak?
Seriously ... why don't we buy it? Is it because there are too many factions of geeks (seperated by OS, creed, nationality, spirituality, etc.)in the world today? Have the geeks simply lost the true revolutionary spirit? Is this the chance for [sic] world domination [/sic] that we've all joked about for years?
/., what is wrong with this idea (besides assuming a volunteer-based and community-based ISP will flop)? They said it couldn't be done with operating systems ... and it happened. What about ISPs? Would this be the biggest waste of money in the history of the world (or the largest pyramid scheme ever) ... or could this be history in the making?
... because right now it'd rock if someone we could all trust (someone who isn't all about money to begin with) would set up a PayPal account for this very purpose and start rounding up heavyweight geeks to form the board. Rally the troops! Let's start buying up dead ISPs and turn the Internet back over to the people! Damn the man!
If you're a lawyer or MBA who reads
Inquiring minds want to know
Even superheroes once were losers
Don't click on this link....... Shitty stuff......
Just wait until Qwest and SW Bell (and other telco's) get their new "adjusted pricing" for DSL out.
I'm sure they smell blood in the water and I bet their "operating costs" for DSL are going to magically go up as the cable world disintegrates. I mean why not? Their main competition could be gone in a matter of weeks and there's no clear alternative to DSL besides satellite, which is still not fully market tested and most users aren't aware of it yet.
Even though there are a bunch of different options for internet access, if you're a cable user and things do go dark, get ready to stand in a long line for getting DSL service.
fun.
-s
According to the articles, @home has 4.1 million cable modem users.
This sort of event should cause the economics of broadband to be reevaluated. If @home was losing 6 mil a week than they weren't charging enough for the service they were providing. Now if they jacked up rates by 6 mil they would obviously lose some customers.
What needs to be found is a market clearing equilibrium price for cable modem access, and unfortunately we may not like what we find. It may be that the number of people willing to pay for high speed access at a rate that makes sense to the provider is actually quite small.
All of this is because ATT is in a hugely powerful position and took advantage of it. 300mil for Excite is a joke when you consider what their contracts are worth - or even when you look at their burn rate 6mil/week. This company is worth a helluva lot more. ATT is just a cash-rich robber-baron who has come in to reap the spoils of Excite's bad fortunes.
It is because of providers like ATT that Excite is in this position to begin with. Of your $45/mo bill, Excite only sees $16 - and they are the ones providing the damn service.
Maybe by shutting down, Excite will put ATT where they belong.
Internet traffic dropped to a three-month low tonight as millions of Code Red infected web servers suddenly went offline.
=)
"Why should I stay with Comcast @Home, given the current situation?"
Before you decide to make a switch, we ask that you remember that your service has not been interrupted at this time. In addition, switching to another provider such as DSL could leave you with:
Pretty lame reasons if you ask me... If I had written that I would have had only one line, "PPPoE" (I'm in Verizon country - blech!)
On a clear disk you can seek forever
Those are ridiculous prices come on. For the people who are just checking their email, $40?
And how the hell can excite lose $6mil/week, these companies are just burning money b/c they don't have proper business sense. Bottom line.
Thank you, Captain Sarcasm, for the enlightening remark about my options. I had no idea that dialup access was available!
I should have said "no other broadband option available". I thought that was implied, since this is an article about broadband connections. In any event, it will be several weeks before I can have dialup anyway, since it will take that long to have a phone line hooked up.
In the meantime, I can limp by on a serial connection through my cell phone at 19.2. So you are indeed correct-- I DO have another option for internet access. 19.2kbps through a Sprint PCS cellphone.
There are people with NO other option, short of long-distance dialup, though.
Actually "Walter" has been getting modstormed for the past few days as well. Most of my posts got to +5 quickly, then got slapped down within hours. I will also be moving on to a new account shortly, after my current IP ban wears off.
If your karma is negative, you can't post anonymously. It's a super sekure slashcode feature, because Taco doesn't think the trolls can log out before they post something.
Stay cool, and good luck in your future endeavors.
~wally
Maybe now Nimbda, and the other fun fun ones that follow suit, will finally slow their beating on my router.s (and PC's) MOST of the IP's I've traced/nslookup'ed, resolve to @home clients.
Thank God!
I'm sorry to all the folks that are effected by this, but this makes the Internet a much safer and quieter (log and packet wise) Network.
Mayhaps some of these effected people will now understand that they are part of a group. They are NOT alone.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
calls will go thru the roof, and yes they will be using shovels but probably NOT for snow.
Let's think about this for a minute. How much does it cost for a corporation to least a T1 line? Over $1000 per month, at least in the United States. Cable modem users are each getting bandwidth that's equivalent or higher than a T1. And they're paying $40 a month. Now, sure, cable modem users are all sharing bandwidth to some extent, but the point is that they can eat up a hell of a lot of bandwidth by downloading giant demos, sharing files, listening to streaming radio, and so on. And they're not paying nearly what that bandwidth really costs at the back end. It's no suprise that this isn't currently a money making proposition. ISP admins have seen this coming since day 1, but like everyone else their eyes lit up at all that bandwidth for so little cost.
According to the bondholders' motion, the typical @Home user charge is $46.00, of which @Home only sees $16 - the cable company keeps the other $30.
Go to alt.satellite.direpc and alt.satellite.starband and tell their actual customers how "mature" the service is.
DirecPC still cuts people off after they download some mysterious amount of data in a given time. Of course, the time is a sliding window of 1 to 4 hours so you never really know how much you can download before your speed is cut. They like to keep their customers guessing. (Very mature.)
Starband's better but they've certainly got their share of pissed off customers who don't like the fact that they paid around a thousand bucks for crappy hardware and locked into a 3 year service contract only to find that Starband was unable to deliver on many of their promises.
Imagine this happening to electric power
That's (sort of) what happened to California. Depending on who you ask, the problem was caused by too much regulation or too much free market.
Help, network dying, all users going online do download pr0n and MP3z, ARG!!!
:(
This is (almost?) worse then the first (2) times Napster was going to be shutdown, but then the entire internet slowed down as users ran to download MP3s, hehe, funny stuff.
Not so funny this time, I am pinging 500 to google and help.broadband.att.com is not working at all
My area as the old TCI@Home network up and running for it, but still, err, hey
somebody mind explaining to me how Excite@Home going down the drain would hurt ANYBODY though? Why is service even going out, I mean shoot, each city is just an @Home affiliate right? With their own network gear and cables and whatnot (well, already using Cable TV lines so the physical layer of the network is defintly staying, unless the fucktard beancounters come around house to house and rip those out too!), so, err, how is anything going to go down? Uh, whaaat?
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
excerpt from http://www.comcastonline.com/info.htm
Why should I stay with Comcast @Home, given the current situation?
Before you decide to make a switch, we ask that you remember that your service has not been interrupted at this time. In addition, switching to another provider such as DSL could leave you with:
- Slower speeds
- Higher Monthly Fees
- Long-Term Contracts
I like "slower speeds" - What could POSSIBLY be slower than a service that is down?
The Exite.com homepage has a link to a page that answers the question (paraphrased) "How will the shutdown of Exite@Home effect the content I receive at Exite.com?" They basically say, "Well, it is dying, but don't worry, we'll still provide you with great content!"
I work for a DSL provider that just got started up again, and I think this is pretty damn funny, especially considering we've had several customers go to Cox and AT&T because "your prices are too high". I bet they're kicking themselves now, especially considering that AT&T is raising subscriber costs starting in January, even if they can get it working.
I've been called a "Fucking Dick" by better people than you.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I just got off the phone with an administrator at Cox. I had to weasel it out of him but my suspicions where correct. The only thing that they are threatening to turn off is Email, DNS, and web services. Does not affect me as I don't use their DNS and provide my own services via my collocated server. They just want enough customers to scream to force the cable companies such as Cox to pay Excite@home more money on contract renewals. I am not worried.
The article says they have the right to shutdown, not that they will be shutting down. There's a big difference in my book.
If push comes to shove and Excite@Home pulls the plug, AT&T is supposed to be putting up info on continuing your cable Internet access at attbi.com.
Of course, you would still need an Internet connection to read that Web site. Hope you saved that old dial-up modem...
I live in a city with aprox. 100,000 population. The only broadband that is available here (other than installing T-1 lines) is @Home. Cox Cable is suggesting that we sign up for a Juno account if they do shut down, and they will let us know when they are able to offer high speed service again. This is 2 months after they sell me my cable modem for 1/2 price. (p.o.ed about that) I already have a dialup through Earthlink for my notebook when traveling, but now I have to dig out a dial-up modem from the parts bin and install it in my desktop. End of the world no. Inconvenient...Yes.
The point being that I have no other alternatives for broadband and I'll be back as soon as it's available.
@Homeless
:oD
... glad to be a RR user...
FLR
I got a letter from them a few days ago which stated in the event Excite does shut down, we'll be switched over in a matter of days. AT&T has supposedly been building their own infrastructure, and all they will require is we power down and change some network settings. They'll also _call_ the customers if this is needed.
there (thâr) adv. 1. At or in that place: sit over there. ...
...
their (thâr) adj. The possessive form of they. 1. Used as a modifier before a noun: their accomplishments; their home town.
Get it right. You sound uneducated.
Its important if these companies keep going assendup, we're gonna need to develop some alternative high speed internet connectivity options, and deploy them before its too late.
:)
Neighborhood based internet is probably the best option. Let the neighborhoods wire themselves up to each other, then pool the monthly fees for one or two high speed RELIABLE uplinks, something like a fractional T3 for a moderately sized neighborhood. This is basiclly the design of cable internet anyways, only it will be under the control of those who are actually using it. And they can dictate their own policy. And if you have a warez kiddy in the neighbhood abusing the service for everyone, you KNOW WHERE HE LIVES, and the problem can be delt with properly.
And if the entire nighbhorhood is wired on the same network, people can each install a wireless ethernet hub and make the entire neighbhorhood wireless ready. If every subdivision would do this, you'll basically have citywide ethernet speed internet coverage.
How to handle the abusers and other problem people? That remains to be seen. And its a problem that someone will need to deal with. @home's solution was to cap the upstream and piss off everyone. Maybe we can do better.
Ok.. off the soapbox for now. Time to go pay the phone bill.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I live in a small community in Oregon, and charter cable is the only available broadband connection. I am considering the possibility of pushing for a neighboorhood area network. I have the resources to bring in a good internet connection, and have most of the hardware required. (lots of 24 port switches, cisco 2600, linux servers, etc). I would prefer to run CAT 5 throughout the neighboorhood, does anyone know what the legal implications of a project like this would be? Where to start? Any ideas are welcome.
I am an @home customer. I am going to dearly miss it. I can't believe I'm not going to have internet. I know what all of you are saying out there, "what, a satisfied @home customer?". Yes, I have been fully satisfied with their service. I love their support workers...ones from china, india, etc. They were great people. They knew nothing about computers though. You had to talk to better support people to accomplish anything...to get to them...you just had to tell the lower support people that you narrowed the problem down to an error in one of the lower three levels of the OSI and they would get confused and transfer you. I love the internet, me and my four computers. My iMac, my Red Hat, and a few windows. Im going to miss downloading kernels.
One of the worst things is...I can't read slashdot anymore...the greatest site on the net...no more borg icons of bill gates for a microsoft story...
Im going to miss all of you slashdotters...keep slashdotting websites....
Time to rock back and forth in front of my cable modem hoping the light doesn't go out.....
-Ian
It's a part of @Home newtork, right?
EVIL CORPORATE PLAN A:
Okay, so let's assume for the moment that excite shuts down. Fine, AT&T loses some money there because they are an investor, but suddenly all of their cable competitors don't really have an Internet service alternative. On the other hand it sounds like AT&T has been building up their own network infrastructure for a while now. So this could put them in the position of selling services direct to their competitors which puts them in an awfully good position.
EVIL CORPORATE PLAN B:
Now, if AT&T can pick up excite for a song, then they end up in the exact same position but it works out even better for them financially because then they've got an already existing infrastructure and with the built in connections to their competitors. This short cuts the hassles that would be involved in EVIL CORPORATE PLAN A.
Now on to my personal rant...
The thing that bothers me in all of this is that AT&T, in the interests of "maximizing shareholder value" should play the game this way. And I'm sure that any of the other competitors would be happy to play the game that way if they had the opportunity to. I'm just so sick of the whole "screw everybody out of their money" game that corporate american seems to have evolved into. It'd be nice if I could watch a commercial by AT&T or SBC or any of the other big telecom companies, that talked about customer service and quality and not spit out my drink from laughing so hard.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
The only reason I have @Home is because I couldn't get DSL where I live, which is incredibly remarkable since I live in a certain large city in the Northwest US that rhymes with Seattle. I live in a phone exchange that is a loop-something (the more phone techies will know what I'm talking about). Not only can't you pump and xDSL through it, it also can't allow me to do dialup faster than 28.8. So, no DSL and 1995 speed phone modems. I'm left with satellite (less bandwidth, more money) or figuring out a way to run a T1 into my house cheaply. I briefly thought about the old pioneer phone companies -- local co-ops where people banded together and got phone service and paid a flat fee to use it -- and maybe setting one up in my phone exchange. It's all a mess, and it's all about simple greed -- bondholders who think they're being screwed against a huge tight-fisted corporation. And who loses? The consumer. It's such a cruel irony this is all happening two years to the day that the WTO protests began.
In related news the price of music CD's rises to $20 (US).
- lather - rinse - repeat -
look at who's in charge of the government. "W" won't put any sort of regulation on a company. better to let the big companies have their way than to save the aggrevation of millions of american citizens.
Yawn... YOU need to re-read the US Constitution again and see that we are NOT in a monarchy-type government. Who makes the laws? Congress. Clueless idiots. People like YOU are the ones who go demanding more government handouts and expect to be taken care of from cradle to grave...
Updated 11/24/2001
Open Positions in Redwood City, CA:
Accounting & Finance
Administration
Business Development
College Opportunities
Content/Web Production/Design
Customer Care & Support
Engineering
Human Resources
Information Technology
International
Legal
Marketing
Networking
Operations
Product Management
Public Relations
Quality Assurance
Sales
heh...
If ya sent in a resume recently, don't hold yer breath...
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Mod this idiot down
The best part of this whole thing is both Cox and AT&T have said they have been developing their own Broadband network infrastructure. All the while they had a Master Distribution Agreement agreement with @Home which stated the following: The MDAs state that the companies shall not "conduct, participate in or have a material beneficial ownership interest in any business within the United States (a `Restricted Business') that involves (i) the provision of a residential Internet service over the cable television plant of the Principal Cable Stockholder at data transmission speeds greater than 128 Kbs and whose primary purpose is the provision to consumers of entertainment, information content, transactional services or electronic mail, chat and news groups (a `Consumer Purpose'), (ii) the connection by the Principal Cable Stockholder of its cable television plant directly or indirectly to any Internet backbone for a Consumer Purpose at data transmission speeds greater than 128 Kbs or (iii) the provision of an internet backbone service," according to Securities & Exchange Commission filings. So by creating their own network its appears as though the two companies AT&T and Cox violated the agreement with @Home. At the same time making @Home look as though they were going to lose their two biggest customers causing @Home's stock to drop. Then you have AT&T which had made a bid to buy @Home. All the while AT&T has been trying to spinoff their Broadband unit. If you can recall they received an unsolicited bid from Comcast this summer. AOL Time Warner quickly followed suit.
Its funny to watch AT$T muscle @Home into this position. The 'last mile' people: AT$T, Qwest, etc, make the majority of revenues from broadband customers. Now that they've forced all the small players from the play field they are now going for dominance over everyone else. The ultimate loser will be YOU. After the dust has settled.. long after, only the 'last milers' will control your access and they'll be making billions because you have no choice.
well..if they can't cram them all in one room, I'm pretty sure they have a computer lab
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
:-d
Yeah, one's possessions (or the lack thereof) are the best guage of one's overall worth as an individual.
So, do you count among the stuff you *do* own the step ladder you use for climbing up on your high horse with?
You mean all those @home users I've rooted are no more? bummer!
If @Home goes away, my only other option for broadband is Qwest DSL, which has MSN as the "free" ISP. Please don't make me stay with Uncle Bill! He's a mean, mean man! I swear I'll stop running web/mud/file servers over my cable... I'll only hook up one computer at a time from now on... I'll be good.... please please please
I've been a loyal @Home customer for several years, and it's inconceivable that they wou
Excite@Home business plan:
:)
1. Sell $1000 worth of bandwidth for $40
2.
3. Profit
Sorry, I had to do it.
Glad to finally know what "always on" means.
I'm screwed. I can't get DSL, I don't have a landline (I just have a cell phone), and now my cable modem's going to be turned off. This sucks.
I might be an anonymous coward, but send the
judge a fax. The court was glad to give me
his fax number. I didn't tell them what for.
3.7 million faxes might just get
our plight noticed. (Or we just might end up
in a big mess of trouble.)
B seems like it would be simpler, but...
Honestly, if the phone and cable companies hadn't been in competition with their own customers I think all of this wouldn't have happened.
Of course, even then it requires the government to regulate that the phone and cable companies can't sell both the lines and the service as that would be a monopoly.
As far as phone and power utilities plunging... Yikes... It's not an impossibility!
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
When I first signed up for @home cable modem service about two years ago, the internet latency as well as bandwidth were excellent. Over the past months both of these have degraded, though the first has degraded to a much higher degree than the second. I knew there would be some degradation, and the bandwidth has stayed within acceptable levels, but internet latency has risen to intolerable levels, higher than dialup modems. While I used to be getting between 15 and 100 millisecond pings with reliable servers on the east coast, I am now regularly getting 250+ millisecond pings to these same sites, while other people I know (both other @home users in different areas and also college students using the high speed college connections) are still getting the 15 to 100 millisecond pings that I was beginning to positively relate with your service. This makes the service compare less than equally to a less expensive dial up service for many applications.
Tanaraus: if they shut us down
Tanaraus: we fill the RCA cable modem with fruit
Tanaraus: when they ask us to return it
Tanaraus: we do so gladly
m5jjs: isn't that what's in there already?
Tanaraus: one might think...
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011130/wr/tech_e xciteathome_dc_4.html
To hear the gods laugh tell them your plans.
I'm a tsr for shaw. tommarow will not be pretty. 600,000 people with http://home.excite.ca does not make for a calm callcentre : |
Anyone who is interested there is a "Bye bye @Home" party on irc.gamesnet.net in #AtHome. Voice to all people with a home.com mask. A non-@Home person will be in there to stay connected while everyone suddenly Ping times out in one big massive plug pulled mass so a log can be put online somewhere.
(Score:0, Interesting)
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011130/wr/media_ exciteathome_fcc_dc_2.html
To hear the gods laugh tell them your plans.
hey, you can still sigh up for @home if you are interested!
ROTFL-
http://www.home.com/xfooter/signup.html
Insight Communications
Service Updates
Friday, November 30, 2001
Dear customer,
We at Insight would like to provide you with an update regarding the status of your Insight@Home service, based on today's hearing.
This afternoon, the US Bankruptcy Court, Northern District of California, issued the decision that enabled Excite@Home to cancel their contracts with their affiliated cable operators. It is important to note that this does not equate to the network shutting down; it simply means that @Home has the option to do so.
Based on the nature of the ongoing negotiations, we are still optimistic that this ruling will not result in a loss of service for our customers and that an agreement will be reached.
We are working hard to avoid any inconvenience to our customers. In mid-October, we, together with other @Home affiliates (including Cox, Comcast, and Mediacom), increased our payments by over 50% to ensure uninterrupted service until an agreement among the Creditors could be reached; this was done at no additional cost to our customers. @Home affiliates including Insight are supporting AT&T in its bid to buy the @Home network. If the network were to go dark, there would be no cash coming in nor would there be any bids for @Home's assets. Therefore, it makes no sense for @Home to "pull the plug."
If the unlikely occurs, we will cover your cost of a dial-up service until we can transition you back to our broadband service. As I mentioned in our earlier note, we are talking with AOL Broadband and Road Runner, and believe we can expedite a transition.
For now, service remains intact and we encourage you to visit the special page we have on our website for further updates: www.Insight-com.com/net/UPDATES . In addition, we'd like to remind you that our customer service centers are operating with expanded staffing and hours this weekend to accommodate your inquiries.
Please know that we, too, are frustrated by this victimization of our customers and ask you to bear with us through this process. We know this service is important to you and we are working hard to meet your needs. We truly appreciate your business and patience as we make every attempt to resolve this situation to your benefit.
Sincerely,
Kim D. Kelly
Executive Vice President, Chief Operating & Financial Officer
Insight Communications
Excite@Home's debts in total amount to over 7 billion - the $750 million issue is just an immediate dispute with bond holders.
didn't it say they were losing 6 million per week? So that would be 40-46 = -6. So their expenses are 46 million per week.
As usual, a stew cooked up by politicians more interested in the next election than anything else. Fixing retail prices but leaving wholesale price unregulated was just stupid.
To hear the gods laugh tell them your plans.
Now visualize, just for a moment, all of the extra internet backbone bandwidth that will be available for the rest of us to use. MMMMMM forbidden PrOn! Hell, one might even be led to believe that our cable modems might be provisioned at a higher rate.
Sean
My landline was about $25 with caller ID. My cellphone is $30 with caller ID, for 250/1200 minutes. So by using my cell all the time, I get the same functionality out of my cell for $30 that I previously got for $55 through both.
Sounds cheaper to me. Only now, I'm kinda screwed for net access.
I don't know where you got the idea that cable internet is not a money making business. If you have 200-1000 people on a cmts all of them are not downloading giant demos or file sharing on morpheus all day.
Furthermore QoS is implemented on their networks and docsis modems can be limited (and they are).
My internet connection has been up about 18 months now. The only time it's ever been off was when I moved the computer downstairs. Speeds are blazing, at least to me, but I'm not sure if i'm getting better than I can with a $50 dsl line.
The only good reason I can think slashdotters hate people with @home is that they can't get high-speed internet themselves, so they want to bitch about it. It's like when they complain because a company doesn't make a port of a game for all 27 Linux users.
I checked on roadrunner http://www.roadrunner.com/rdrun/ Isn't that strange they say they service my area. Either this is just a back-up plan for Comcast or they don't think exite is exiting anymore. -rtm
I wonder if Comcast will sent me an offical e-mail telling me that my service no longer exists at two minutes after midnight. Of course, I will not recieve it.
Quick, download stuff while you can!
[Error 407: No signature found]
Excite@Home is just a fucking ISP that affiliated with a bunch of local cable companies. The cable companies run the physical network and @Home provides DNS servers and e-mail. If Excite shuts down services tonight cable companies will be free to sign up to just about any other ISP they want since the cable modems and coax lines aren't going to magically disappear. Watch Eathlink and MSN pick up a shitload of contracts if Excite bites the dust. Poor service from an ISP is often times poor service from the people that run your local dial-up, LEC, or cable carrier.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
The big cable investors are more than happy to run their own networks. They just need all those inconvenient contracts nullified by bankruptcy. As this market slides into consolidation count on the consumer getting the worst of it! Don't think for a moment that the expiration of @home will mean anything resembling open access, or that outbound ports will open. Streaming will get choked, and you won't get real bandwidth without real competition (don't hold your breath) or the restoration of service quality regulation (don't hold your breath).
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes "Who Keeps the Keepers Themselves" ~ Juvenal
Ah, Excite@Home was losing just 6 million a week?
:)) so the price changes were not going to take effect until april or so.
Lets see here now;
6 million a week
24 million a month.
3.73 million customers.
Uh
Why not just raise fees by $10 a month? Even if they lost 1.33 million customers from it they would at least break even.
I actualy recently (in the middle of summer rather) got a notice saying that the bill was going to increase by $10 a month.
Hehe.
But my current licence agreement apparently prohibited @Home from changing the monthly rate charges right away if I had signed up before a certain day (I got it almost the month it become available
@Home would have at that time obviously started making money, so why did the investors just not wait awhile? Or put some more money in? Or Excite cut costs a bit? (err, ditch the friggin portal, bleh, and STOP REDESIGNING YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICES SITE!!! Three redesigns already, yeesh! That must cost a bit of cash!!! ) Or even (God Forbid) implement a 10GB a month download limit or something? Or more competitvly sell their @Work program (uh, it sucked, DSL was about 1/2 the price of what @Home wanted for compariable @Work service, bleh)?
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
And I just got the service this week. I figure that at the most, we'll lose service for a month. They can't afford to be down for too long. The only reason I got @home is because DSL is not available in my area.
----
Spam subject of the moment: Offshore account secrets -nashville disrupt
Excite @home shutting down affects all @home subscribers no matter who your cable company is. @home provides backbone as well as services such as e-mail, news, webhosting etc... @home turned off new subscriber provisioning a little while ago untill the cable companies provided more money(extortion). Most cable companies have been working on their own backbone to take over for @home for some time, but they are definatly not going to be ready tommorow! What will most likely happen is the cable companies will pay more money to @home to remain functional until they are ready. If @home does shut down there will be some OC48 facillities being ordered in a hurry.
As I sit here wondering if my Excite@Home service will be killed off sometime over the night, it came to me that the bondholders really shouldn't have any say in this. Unless I'm totally off the reservation here (and my knowledge of bankruptcy law approaches nil), don't the owners (read: people who own @Home stock) have the final say here, or is it the judge in the bankruptcy case? I seem to remember learning in my finance classes that stockholders are the owners, the equity-holders, and bondholders are basically second-class citizens, because they aren't really owners of the company, they just finance debt.
Bryan J. Casto
bryan.casto(a)gmail.com
I have a cable modem sitting less than 1 foot away from me that belongs to them, i am leasing it from them so whats this mean, dose this modem become mine to do with what i wish, or are they gona come knock on my door and say we want our cable modem?
have fun @home i hope i have all my passowrds
Peace, Freedom and Linux for all
They will just switch to another provider. That's like saying if you put AOL out of business, there won't be any morons left on the net.
I have AT&T@Home...
Yesterday after midnight, it went belly up. I was able to ping AT&T's gateway. I was able to ping my parents, and I was able to ping my friends down the street, who are also ATT@Home, but the DNS server disappeared, as did our internet connectivity, which included our email. Since the DNS disappeared, how can we resolve the mail server?
And AT&T says to visit help.attbi.com for vital information after a disconnect. How are we supposed to get there if our service is interrupted?
ISPs love the idea of giving out email addresses that create high switching costs. They call it 'stickyness' they want to increase stickiness so that they reduce 'churn' - people closing accounts.
I think the bondholders have screwed up big time here. The fact is that the offer made by AT&T is probably way over the resale value of the equipment. Three year old switching hardware is usually worth less than a tenth of its purchase price.
The excite scheme was idiotic from the start. Excite did not own the lines they were selling the internet connectivity over, they did not own the customer relationship, they did not even own the distribution systems at the cable heads.
So all that it would ever take for the ISPs to switch to a lower cost provider was to yank a connection and redirect their traffic elsewhere. That is not a good thing if your business model is to underprice your services in the startup phase.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I recently got email working through my own domain name, which means I can read it over the web, or pop it to another account (it currently goes into my work/school email.) I've never used my @home email, but I needed to do something to get away from hotmail, and I'm really glad I didn't switch over to my excite address. ;)
What makes you think that $1000/mo for T1 is a reflection of the cost of providing that service? The telecoms have been notorious for keeping prices way up and raking in the dough for many years.
In my previous company (a Fortune 10 chemicals company) I was close to the IT people who negotiated big longlines contracts with MCI & AT&T. This was back in the late '80s. With the advent of MCI, AT&T's tarifs (remember, these were regulated pricing schemes) dropped considerably.
I think I remember hearing recently that T1 prices have not changed significantly in the past 5 to 10 years. When you consider the amount of "dark fiber" - unused capacity - out there, you can see that prices could be lower if providers thought that they could recoup the lost revenue with volume. But that would require a different business model, based on low-margin commodity markets instead of a high-margin captive market based on regulated monopolies.
So, T1 rates are overpriced, and the true cost of bandwidth is vastly lower.
Then think about @home's record of spewing cash like a gushing oil well, the purchase of Excite for $7 Billion (!?!!!) for one. And do you know how much revenue they are deriving from that one? That's right, they are losing money, it has no revenue at all! Is it not more likely that debt service is what's really pulling them under?
And another thing, we've seen in news stories that of the $50/subscriber that the cable comanies pull in for service, they send about $16, or 1/3 to @home. The question that should be asked is, is that comparable to pricing and cost ratios in other similar industries and markets?
To hear the gods laugh tell them your plans.
Perhaps I should look at my @home horoscope instead...Friday, November 30, 2001
The Sun is in Sagittarius and the Moon is going from Taurus into Gemini. More changes are under way, both in your career and at home. This causes confusion, but you can find your way through it. You might also find something better than you had before. Follow the light.
I am following the light.......
RIAA kills napster; one less reason for broadband.
MPAA kills divx groups on @home...another reason to not have BB.
@Home Caps users after a year to 128K/s, then 128k/s (12Kbytes/s...ick)and offers no "business class" or upgrades (despite @work being advertised); yet another reason to not have broad band.
Bell Sloth^H^H^H^HSouth only gurantees a 9600baud connection on its phone lines....I'm sure that will do wonders for DSL...uh, huh, you betcha (doesn't resistance make electrons stronger?...sure, skippy, sure).
The @home cap, btw, pisses off a lot of gamers...first reason I got @home...la, la, laaa..yet another reason to not need BB (more to the point...@home).
Killing off the divx groups...more traffic to the "outside" world of @home, prolly did their backbone a world of good...
I dunno, it seems that @home is in the dark about customer service, support and satisfaction...perhaps the need some sort of "Magic Lantern" to light their way (SEG).
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
This is clipped from the linked page, because it will probably disappear soon.
Heading: Never get that disconnected feeling again.
Image: Cheesy stock photograph of person smiling broadly.
Page copy: One of the benefits of @Home's broadband service is instant access to Web sites and multimedia experiences. Because the connection is always on, you can walk up to your computer, get the details you want, and be on your way.
With @Home, the Internet becomes more accessible and useful. In fact, people with a fast, always-on connection use the Internet more often than people who have to wait to dial-in and download. Our high-speed broadband service makes the Internet so responsive, it's just like changing channels.
A premier high-speed Internet service. It's there when you need it. Whenever you need it.
Pop quiz, hotshot!
It's 11:55 PM, and you're feverishly downloading your mp3s and pr0n before @Home pulls the plug, when suddenly you hear the news:
"Microsoft has purchased the assets of the @Home network, and has immediately assumed all service contracts and customers of the former @Home broadband network."
You get to keep your bandwidth! Your games! Your pr0n! But that means you have to pay money to Microsoft for that privelage! Do you rip the cable jack out of the wall in fear, or do you submit to the will of a known monopoly?
What do you do?
What DO you DO???
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
I do feel sorry for all the users who will be left out in the cold on this one (at least until they find an alternate ISP), but one thing I will NOT miss from @Home's netspace is their large infestation of spammers.
As it stands now, about 5% of my 700+ line block file is made up of @Home's various IP ranges from all over the US, and some in Canada as well. I will be happy to be able to trim that back a bit.
This, of course, assumes that @Home doesn't find a buyer by midnight.
Keep the peace(es).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
How am I going to keep my precious negative karma in place if I can't keep getting slammed by cranky Europeans?
I don't think that I can live another day without being called an arrogant, bomb-crazy warhead who likes to kill children... every time I point out that I enjoy being an American.
After all, I do like more than to bomb innocent children with missing limbs, I mean, who doesn't?
Cmon, admit it. Puuuut ooon the Cooowboy Haaat. LOL.
Every one of us @home customers go through a local cable company... that's how @home works. And I've yet to see a city where you get to "choose" your cable company (that means, they're a monopoly in your area). In my city, we get to "choose" Insight,Comcast, or Time Warner. Guess how? By moving.
They'll just move. They always do. And it's not fucking fair to those of us that don't spam.
How much money Excite@Home burns to maintain all that? I do not want to pay for service that I do not use; I want to have plain broadband Internet access with static (or quasi-static) IP address, and I believe AT&T will be able to provide just that.
If you took cable over DSL, you get what you deserve....
Capacity for 5 million, while servicing only 10% of that is not a good business plan.
Not necessarily.
Suppose (hypothetically):
Your network will support 5,000,000 subscribers,
Your non-recurring costs are $1/subscriber-month,
Your per-subscriber costs are $10/subscriber-month, and
You charge $50/subscriber-month.
This:
Breaks even at 125,000 subscribers,
Makes $195,000,000/month ($2.3 Billion/yr) at 5,000,000 subscribers, and
Breaks down at 5,000,001 subscribers.
Of course that's not what they did. Nevertheless, they were up to 73.4% of the design capacity of the network by 7/11. So (unless their business model didn't include making a profit until their capacity was saturated) I don't think lack of customers was the problem.
With no data but that timeline I'd wonder if they underestimated their per-user recurring costs (such as support) or their network capacity (which maps back into per-user recurring costs through extra support when they saturate and the connections start to degrade).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
When I said "non-recurring costs" I meant "recurring fixed overhead" (i.e. recurring costs that are not per-user).
Sorry 'bout that.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
That's why they are willing to give up voting rights. Companies issue bonds when they don't want to dilute the stockholder's equity (and dividend checks).
Actually, secured creditors get theirs before the bondholders, but they may be secured by relatively worthless assets, like routers, switches and servers which devalue quickly. Bondholders are second class, as "unsecured creditors," anyone who holds accounts recievables on the bankrupt company is also lumped into this group.
Stockholders (steerage passengers in this metaphor) get stock, which they can sell for whatever they can get. Last I heard, excite@home was a penny stock...
To hear the gods laugh tell them your plans.
As I sit here waiting to find out whether I'm going to be a victim in the Excite@Home debacle, it occurs to me that the wrong people are making the decisions. Those of us who actually make technology work are ones who need to take charge, rather than the politicians, lawyers, and judges who seem bent only on destruction. Why do we keep letting them get away with it? It would seem to me that since Judge Thomas Carlson of the Ninth Circuit decided that consumers come last in the @Home mess, he should understand what the real effect is. He says that, "While the cessation of customers' Internet access is regrettable, it does not jeopardize public health or safety." Regrettable? I'm guessing he would find it very regrettable indeed if he didn't have internet access himself. I'm sure he and his staff depend on it as much as we do and I believe if he takes our access away, his should be removed as well, along with that of all the bondholders (apparently there is no list of them anywhere) and other vultures who have forced this issue.
These days, it seems to me that there are five main enemies of technology: the RIAA, the MPAA, the telcos and cable companies who have fought open access every step of the way, publishers who think their so-called intellectual property is more important than the Constitution, and the monopolists who want to control all technology. To further their aims, they have hijacked our own government and turned it against us. Just as guilty are the members of Congress who were bought and paid for by these special interests and the members of the judiciary who consistently rule against any online rights for anyone outside these special groups. Let's track down the individuals who are leading this assault on the technology we create and our freedom to use it.
How long do you think these organizations would be able to continue without the technology we make for them? If you are an ISP, I believe you should cut off these people altogether and refuse them service altogether. (Wouldn't it be ironic if the judge's service were cut off by one of the very companies in the case he just ruled on?) If you make software or web pages for these people, quit; there are other companies and organizations that do have some integrity to work for. If you're a hosting company for these people, cancel their contracts and remove their websites. "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone." Let's pull the plug. It has to be done honestly and openly, but let's pull the plug.
Hope I get to send this befor...
The infrastructure will still be there, it's just a matter of forcing Excite to give up access to it so that the cable companies can run they're own ISP off the lines. I've never written to my Senator before today (and there sure are better things for me to write about), but these kind of bad business decisions irritate me.
They had a great product, but decided to add all this extra crap that no one uses (has anyone been to Excite.com or home.net before the Chpt 11 filing was annouced?)
I really hate Dan Patrick.
The following letter is being e-mailed to all Insight@Home customers this evening, November 30, 2001:
Dear customer,
We at Insight would like to provide you with an update regarding the status of your Insight@Home service, based on today's hearing.
This afternoon, the US Bankruptcy Court, Northern District of California, issued the decision that enabled Excite@Home to cancel their contracts with their affiliated cable operators. It is important to note that this does not equate to the network shutting down; it simply means that @Home has the option to do so.
Based on the nature of the ongoing negotiations, we are still optimistic that this ruling will not result in a loss of service for our customers and that an agreement will be reached.
We are working hard to avoid any inconvenience to our customers. In mid-October, we, together with other @Home affiliates (including Cox, Comcast, and Mediacom), increased our payments by over 50% to ensure uninterrupted service until an agreement among the Creditors could be reached; this was done at no additional cost to our customers. @Home affiliates including Insight are supporting AT&T in its bid to buy the @Home network. If the network were to go dark, there would be no cash coming in nor would there be any bids for @Home's assets. Therefore, it makes no sense for @Home to "pull the plug."
If the unlikely occurs, we will cover your cost of a dial-up service until we can transition you back to our broadband service. As I mentioned in our earlier note, we are talking with AOL Broadband and Road Runner, and believe we can expedite a transition.
For now, service remains intact and we encourage you to visit the special page we have on our website for further updates: www.Insight-com.com/net/UPDATES. In addition, we'd like to remind you that our customer service centers are operating with expanded staffing and hours this weekend to accommodate your inquiries.
Please know that we, too, are frustrated by this victimization of our customers and ask you to bear with us through this process. We know this service is important to you and we are working hard to meet your needs. We truly appreciate your business and patience as we make every attempt to resolve this situation to your benefit.
Sincerely,
Kim D. Kelly
Chief Operating & Financial Officer
Insight Communications
Gawd - even as my cable modem sputters its last remaining packets, I waste them whoring Karma on Slashdot.
Ugh. I feel sick.
Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems like the same stupidity that Ricochet went through. And in that case, the creditors ended up having to accept a lower offer, not getting more.
Ok,
What services does Excite@home provide that it cannot service the customers where they are making 3.6mm @$16 a month???
And what service other than providing the cable does AT&T and other get for their 80 million a month?
It would appear that excite is losing about 10 a month per customer... Seems like this should be easy to fix. Lower costs, or raise prices....
Who wrote the suicidal contracts in the first place that did not allow either reasonable recouping of costs, or can't figure out how to actually provide service at a reasonable rate?
I know this is incredibly selfish, but I'm relishing the thought of my online game habit flourishing again. I haven't bad a good game of Q3 online in months. My apologies to those out in the cold on this one.
Praying for the end of your wide-awake nightmare.
Cable modem as a service is NOT unprofitable for the cable companies, only @Home proper. What today's decision was about was the right of @Home to cancel those contracts in order to negotiate ones with better terms for them. The cable companies currently pay I believe only like $12 bucks per customer to @Home and pocket the rest. @Home does marketing, provides top-level infrastructure, and probably other assorted services. All I hope is that the cble companies strike the deal.
Finally my web server will stop being hit with non stop Nimda and cod red attempts!
although capitalism sucks ass,
socialism sucks ass as well.
I use @Home, via Cox - if I understand this correctly:
@Home provides email, web space, usenet, and DNS service, correct?
So, if they cancel their contracts, and the broadband provider (Cox, in my case) continues to run its hardware - then what have I lost?
I still have the pipe, right? As long as that stays connected, I still have the internet. All I don't have is (in order of "importance"):
1. DNS Service
2. Email
3. Usenet access
4. Web site hosting
OK, so I find another DNS provider (or set up BIND). I also need to find another Email provider (or set up Sendmail myself). I would definitely need a provider for Usenet (can't host that myself). I could host the Web site myself.
Remember that AUP? Isn't that with @Home - not really with COX (or whoever your BB provider is)? Could this be what a lot of "us" really want - a big fat pipe to do with how we choose?
I suppose if the BB provider was nice, they could do this, allow this. I have already looked into other DNS service options (from using friends to my work, etc).
Unless Cox shuts off the whole thing (why should they? They even say to leave your modem connected).
Or do I have something wrong? What am I missing?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
There is plenty of public DNS servers. Just type WHOIS domainname on any *nix box and your get the DNS for that domain. Use that.
Pick MS or some other outfit even ATT.com might be good. If you need your own DNS server get one for free here
Help fight continental drift.
As up to now, all around the world, a few players have gotten a solid grasp of the market. They sign up local landlords etc. for 10 year contracts which makes it impossible to switch without moving.
In Sweden there is basically only one company having the entire market for broadband on cable, UPC, a Dutch company whose shares are plummeting.
Perhaps it's just a matter of time before I loose my connection as well.
However.. there have been grumblings about monopolistic behavior for a while, and perhaps things are about to change. Governments have been thinking about forcing the large companies holding the infrastructure (and the customers as hostages) to open up for new players to produce a competitive market.
Generally, I'm not pro-forcing when it comes to the "free market". Some companies have made major investments in fiber and other infrastructure and just doing a Robin Hood on them seems a little unjust, but what are the alternatives?
When a company gets too large and start controlling the market and start changing the rules, at least the US have some anti-monopoly (antitrust) law, which is supposed to work in theory at least.
Well at least we all (or most?) still have DSL alternatives, so no need to really get upset.
In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda ~ Bill Durodié
Shutting down the service won't pay for the infrastructure already in place. What are you saving?? electricty? support staff?
No more money coming in... hmmm sounds stupid to me.
I haven't read anyone talking up DirecPC. DSL is not in my area (New Jersey). I checked when I first heard @Home going belly up. I did read enough people are fed up with Comcast and going satellite.
Oh yeah, FU judge.
....... Thus ends my attempt at wit or whatever
There's a lot of speculation that AT&T planned all this in advance...they are the majority shareholder in @home, and the best theory is that they intentionally ran the company into the ground so they could pick up the rest of the company that they don't already own at fire sale prices. Then, they could sell the entire AT&T Broadband business unit at a tidy profit. AS it stands, AT&T could easily dismantle @home and use the hardware they acquired for pennies on the dollar for AT&T Broadband's network.
Shutting down the network would only help in this regard, as the bondholders are even less likely to get more than the amount of money AT&T is offering for the rest of the company than before.
And the fact that AT&T is the only provider with a backup plan fully in place can't help but add fuel to the speculation...
got an email confirming what I've been told on the phone -- our service will continue uniterruppted. My local cable was bought by Cox (Norman, OK area if anyone is interested). Through it all, we kept our roadrunner network, which always has seemed to have less problems than my bretheren in the "big city" to the North who have Cox.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Found this link on the Comcast website... http://www.comcastonline.com/info.htm I guess they're trying everything they can to provide uninterrupted service to their customers. I don't know about the rest of the Comcast cable users out there, but I'm sure as hell going to be one pissed off customer tomorrow morning if I no longer have my precious broadband!
It seems that Shaw, my provider, Cogeco and even Rogers are sufficiently prepared for this event. Of course old Ted Roger is going to lose a bit of his shirt on this thing and they have been slow to react because of their interests in @home and partnerships with AT&T, and there are still lots of people questioning if Rogers can support all of their customers. Atleast 10% may be without service tonight.
...
Shaw made the conversion months ago, mostly due to poor service from Excite, especially with email.
But thank god for out socialist interfering government, because by 2004 they are promising us broadband in every pot. Now if everyone had a computer too. Even the CRTC is not going to interfere with the net at this point anyway. Beside it is because of there regulations that I pay less for my cable service, only $40 Cnd, that is like 5 US, and I get more bandwidth and better service.
We may not be able to support a useful military, but we all can get streaming video of the latest war to our home from cnn.
Excuse me while I download the latest Suse version.
It is 40 below and I don't give a
You lose your IP address for one. Most of the IP's were rented by @home. In many cases you also lose your bandwidth beyond the gateway, @home leased the circuits. That's no the same for all markets, hope it works out for you.
Carpe Deez
Yes, of course it is. Even someone elementary school educated will be able to tell a complete sentence from an incomplete one. Just for the record, the above sentence is in the imperative tense. It is indeed a complete sentence.
I encourage you to keep up your studies, though. Soon you'll have the linguistic skills necessary to enter high school!
I should say the above does only apply to proper education systems, though. By all appearances, all one needs is to be able to write his name in order to graduate from high school in the USA.
Inside sources say this. All AT&T customers will not experience a loss in service, it is business as usual. Negotiaations are taking place as we speak and Excite @Home has said they will not pull the plug until negotiations are complete. AT&T users can expect negotiations to end sometime on Sunday. If no resolution is reached as of Sunday there will be a loss of service until December 15th. AT&T will migrate existing subs begining Dec. 9 through the 15th to the AT&T network currently run under WorldNet. Your email will change from home.com to attbi.com ( Broadband Internet ).
Get all your posting in before Sunday night!!!
Deep Throat
$6,700,000,000 paid
10,000,000 received
67000000000 to 10000000
670000000 to 1000000
67000000 to 100000
6700000 to 10000
670000 to 1000
67000 to 100
6700 to 10
670 to 1
67 to 0.1
6.70 to 0.01
1 to 0.001492537 ------
.67 to 0.0001
Sorry to all who had to go through this. Trolls are plenty here tonight. Must be a flock of @home kiddies who are upset that they soon will not be able to get their porn.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
grep cmd.exe access_log | grep ^24 | wc -l
1157
need i say more?
I am losing my @home service. I'm screwed. What the hell went wrong! Their business was booming!
I dont think I can handle living w/o high speed internet. I hope my cable company gets its Charter Pipeline going in fast!
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
If you're doing wireless and the local @Home g00ns fall on their ass immediately do the following.
Get to every apartment building with LOS to your pop. Give the building manager a free account in exchange for access to the roof & wiring closet and offer $5/mo for in building line rental.
Install Cisco Long Reach Ethernet Catalysts and Cisco 575 customer premise gear. Or insert a DSLAM vendor you're familiar with - I happen to know/love IOS so I stick with it - Paradyne might be a good choice as well.
Distribute using 5.8 gig UNI band stuff. Skip 2.4 gig - that is going to be a cat fight and you don't want the rich veins of users subject to the vagaries of the brewing broadband civil war in the ISM band.
You heard it hear first, folks. I've got four buildings in the high rent district already onboard and there are six - eight more I can see. If this really goes down I want to pick up $15k/mo in recurring revenue over the next month
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
@home in the northeast USA appears to be down, as of 11:40PM EST
(at least the four people i know in that area just died)
it's back :)
I'm on comcast. It's 11:54PM in the east.
To hear the gods laugh tell them your plans.
However my car is turning into a pumpkin
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
So since most of the news sites generally take a few hours to update, I have an idea. Now that it's past midnight EST, can anyone whose service goes down post here as soon as they lose access, so we know if this is actually happening or not? Cool, thanks.
There's something funky going on. I wonder if any other ATT@Home subscribers are seeing it. AT&T mailed out both e-mail and snail mail stating that to get updates on this situation we should go to http://help.broadband.att.com. When I try to get to that page normally I get nothing. No page. When I do a ping to that address it resolves (via Excite's DNS controllers) to 209.19.5.9 (further identified as gilera.tci.net). I eventually got to the page via a few round-about methods other users aren't likely to use. The actual address for the page, given by AT&T off their main site, is http://198.178.8.101. Now, maybe it's just a bad entry in @Home's DNS controller, but isn't it funny how the page that most ATT@Home users are going to want to get to at this time is being misdirected? Especially since the same DNS controller correctly resolves broadband.att.com as 198.178.8.166? Deliberate sabotage or just gross negligence on the part of their network admin? I don't know how this might be working in other parts of the country. It could be a locally assigned DNS controller, but @Home doesn't want to give you a choice in the matter of what controllers you use. They are assigned via DHCP, or are supposed to be.
0013 hundred hours and I'm still working. Maybe Comcast, at least figured out a way to keep up and running! Hope??
12:16....im still on...I can sleep now....
So... is anyone offline yet?
If your internet connection is dead, please raise your hand.
(note: this is sarcasm)
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
AT&T has told me both in e-mail and in an actual letter that they have their own network, and should Excite go down I'll be migrated over to it.
I can't help but wonder why they have their own network unless it's a really crappy one...
"Derp de derp."
cox@home in hampton roads, va is working fine, it's 12:30 here..
and I am still on. In the CNET article it doesn't say whether or not excite will actually unplug it. If anything my connection seems to be more snappy.
I've worked extensively with sattellite, and I'd recommend against it. Horrible latency, slow speeds, a bad system overall.
Just say no to Sattelite.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Alright all you @home folks who are rejoicing that you're still online, to quote from the first linked article:
"A federal bankruptcy court judge in San Francisco today said that the broadband network of Excite@Home can be shutdown on Friday at midnight PST (3:00 AM EST) if a deal with its cable partners and creditors is not reached, sources at the proceedings tell Dotcom Scoop."
It will stop functioning at 3:00 AM, NOT 12:00AM. Got another 2.5 hrs before any real rejoicing.
... that's all i wrote...
- The "Excite!" portal, and
- The bond payments
However, by shutting the network down they've just destroyed its value. I'll probably be down tomorrow, and if so, I will swiftly arrange for an alternative arrangement on Monday and never return to @Home.-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
ComCast is still up here in MI. It is 12:35AM
Apple is like a strange drug that you just cant quite get enough of they shouldnt call it Mac. They should call it crack
From what I can tell, AT&T wins either way. They do sell DSL service too, after all.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Folks,
I think right now there may be a deal in the offing to very likely have current @Home subscribers switched over EarthLink as their cable modem ISP.
It may take a while, but EarthLink is the natural to replace Excite@Home because 1) EarthLink already has cable modem experience from their rollout on Time-Warner cable systems and 2) EarthLink has a big enough infrastructure to handle 4 million high-speed users.
Two other ISP's may be in the running: MSN and AOL. I wonder will AT&T and Cox make it possible to make MSN as one possible ISP for former @Home subscribers.
All I gotta say is I'm glad I have my $34.95/mo 1.5Mb DSL connection
(as I've had since '97)
Who say's Canada's technologically backwards?
Well, I'm a Comcast@Home subscriber an here is my good bye to high speed internet. Was fun having it for seven months, never had any issues. Not even an IP address change.
Alternative for now ist supposed to be Net Zero? Yeah right, ha. Only if it would be available for Linux - shitheads.
Well let's see what is up with the net when I wake up tomorrow!
When I got home today, I checked my routing tables, and I found the order of my metrics somehow changed, so I fixed it, and I got my internet back... phew....
I'd be interested in seeing their cash position. My bet is that Excite has a terribly negative cash position, but if you sever @Home from Excite, you end up with a very good positive cash flow (even while racking up the paper losses). However, said cash flow, with 4,200,000 customers, is unlikely to be able to swiftly pay back $750M in bonds. So the bond holders think they can get more money by trying to bribe the AT&T, Cox, Comcast. The problem is that Cox and Comcast decided months ago that they weren't playing that game, leaving the bond holders to play with AT&T. And AT&T doesn't play. They have their own long-haul backbones that they can swiftly transition their customers to.
Of course, bankers don't understand these technical details. So we get this nonsense. What will happen is that @Home is finished. Kaput. Ended. There will be no more @Home. The routers and servers and such will be sold off for pennies on the dollar on eBay. The bonds will be paid off for pennies on the dollar, if the bankruptcy court deems to give them even that much ahead of other debtors. The landlines provisioned will revert to the carriers, who will then sell the capacity to someone else for cheap. And Internet access will get that much cheaper for ISP's and businesses. Us consumers are unlikely to enjoy things as much, but hey, this is the Corporate States of America, nobody cares about consumers.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Shutting down doesn't void the land-line contracts with the telecoms providers, or the leases on their data centers, or etc. It just cuts off their cash flow. That is why this game of Internet chicken is so astoundingly stupid.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Just trying to update folks with the situation here ... while the Comcast page isn't yet providing any new information, I *can* say that at least it's 1:30 (an hour and a half after the theoretical time of the potential shutdown) and my Comcast@Home service in MD is still working. Maybe there's hope ... maybe not.
P.S. - For the people above who have said "Good riddance to @Home users" because, variously, that @Home subscribers are all spammers and/or cl00bi3 Windows users infected with Nimda, I just need to say - I apologize for the language and, I'm sure this will get me furiously modded down but I have to say it - f**k you.
I'm a Mac and BSD user. I don't spam. This is my home Internet connection, and I depend on it. Remind me to, when someday your ISP may cut you off for some reason through no fault of your own, say "good riddance" snidely as well.
"95% of all Slashdot
I'm on AT&T @home...
its 1:45 EST and our @HOME service is still working... what gives? don't friggin scare us like that...
oh well, back to playing UT...
the odometer lives!
Well, it looks to me like they're gone. I'm a Rogers@home customer, and was just on-line a few minutes ago when all DNS querries started failing for me. Trying to ping the @home DNS servers that I had been using and didn't get any response. I don't know if they're truly off, or just that they've blocked off the Rogers@home people or what.
On the upside, Roger's own new stuff seems to be working. Just checked my DNS entries on the Linux ip-masq box and it seems to have picked up brand new DNS severs to use. After a quick change to my workstation settings I was back up and running.... err, at least walking at a brisk pace. It looks like this change over was rather last-minute for Rogers, and some of their servers are still a touch sketchy. E-mail is working fine (though I only send through their servers, not receive), but usenet has been up and down for the past few days. A couple days ago I wasn't getting much at all, I believe due to DHCP server problems, but it seems to be working again.
Oh well, so far so good (knock on wood).
Oddly enough, when I visited the Excite.com website a pop-under to get loan approval appeared.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
I had a DSL connection, and all of a sudden, one day it died. Soon after that, I moved and got a cable modem connection, and just 3 months after that, its dying.
Give me a break! This is no way to treat customers, just so that a few fat corporate pigs at AT&T can get an ISP on the cheap. The government bailed out the airlines, but seems to give two shits about the internet. Just imagine if the government let AT&T drop our phone service... people would freak. Well guess what? I don't have a phone line because a fast net connection was enough for communication and entertainment.
My connection is still here (and its past midnight CST), but I would appreciate more QoS and reliability than what I have experienced so far from broadband service providers.
tomorrow, when i check my mail i will have 3x the spam, because all of the spammers are going to rush to send that last chunk of spam out before the shutdown.
im suprised AOL or Micro$oft hasn't put in a bid.
While your post does have some salient points, I'm inclined to disagree.
/. readers are), the ones that are faltering, are faltering because they didn't realize they were dealing with economic morons. Some did realize this, and got their own projects underway.
In Canada, we've had cable modems for a long time, few years, and in most areas of the country (only the remote/low population areas are still out of the loop).
Our companies, Shaw, Rogers, and Cogeco, all used to use @Home to provide their cable service. Problem is, @Home's service sucked ass. Downtimes. Router outages. Server failures. Mismanagement.
Case in point, I had sentry21@home.com, but had two sentry21 accounts on two different servers (when I moved from one city to another, they fucked up). I ended up having to check both accounts because I wasn't sure if they'd ever get their heads out of their asses. As it is, I haven't lived in Abbotsford for well over a year, and my e-mail is still stored there. Go figure.
Shaw saw this coming, and began building their own network. Shaw Fibrelink now covers everywhere in the country that Shaw services or serviced. It is one of the biggest, fastest data networks in the country. I get upwards of 500 KB/s on decent computers (G4), and very low latencies. My routes are awesome, the techs are smart, and it's generally very sweet.
Shaw is also making money hand over fist. They are -not- losing money just because people are sucking down pr0n MPEGs and DivX like leeches (and Canada has the highest adoption of broadband in the country).
Cogeco saw the same thing, and started building their network. Rogers was slower on the mark, and is now playing catch-up, but is still in the game.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to imply that Canada is better than the US, or to brag about our infrastructure. Make your own judgements if you wish.
My point is that my cable company, Shaw, is a cable company. Now that being a cable company involves providing internet access, they are an ISP as well, but that is all they are.
Rogers has several branches, none of which make money, and they're pretty stupid to keep them, but some (like cellphones) will pay off in the long run and are worth subsidizing.
Cogeco... Well, let's ignore them. No one likes Cogeco.
Excite@Home? Spent $780 million on a zero-profit online greeting card company. Why? Because they're a dot-com. They didn't know what they were, and they mistakenly thought that they were a portal. That's why Excite bought @Home in the first place, back when people cared about portal sites. They were just too stupid to see reality: no one cares about clicks or eyeballs, they care about goods and services.
It is not the bandwidth that is the killer. @Home peers. They peered at the BCIX, which gave me 7 millisecond pings over 5 hops to ftp.ca.debian.org back when Stormix was still around. They peer elsewhere.
The killer was stupidity and greed. They wasted money because they forgot that it had value. They wasted money because they had dollar signs in their eyes and couldn't see anything else, no matter how bad things looked.
Our (Canada's) cable companies are doing great, because they jumped ship. Yours (the US's; I assume you are American, most
AT&T won't be (too) adversely affected. That's why they're offering low bids for the cable infrastructure. If they get the bid, they get a huge, fast network. If they don't, they lose nothing.
Me, I'm going to continue raping my bandwidth for all it's worth. 5 megabits (clocked, not marketed) and 2 static (in practice, not theory) IPs for $50 CDN/month? Screw DSL.
--Dan
So - What's the scoop?
I guess all of us @home users will find out in 15 minutes.
Anyone want to take a guess how long the outage will last?
[Connection closed by foreign host]
Someone grab the pr0n before we go down!
The alternate att@home website http://www.attbi.com just went live - not a good sign.
It's 00:00 PST - still up with cox@home here in AZ. Crossing fingers...
Comcast @home - NJ is up - it's after 3am here.
[Connection closed by foreign host]
Well still no shutdown ... so far so good ...
...
... bad surprise ... If Comcast is still up I will post a reply to my entry ... otherwise ...
Well I guess I will know when I wake up
Good
-- Martial MICHEL
its 2.05 here
Help fight continental drift.
12:04am, PST, @Home still up!
--Sanatan
and a good thing... being comcast and all... could it be that this was taken a little outta hand?
tick tock tick tock
my @home is sending this to you...
'cock smocking'? Are you implying that these guys put aprons on chickens?
"Derp de derp."
Confused...
As of 12:11AM Seattle is still up.
I'm on AT&T@Home, it's 00:11 PST, and I'm still connected. http://help.broadband.att.com/ seems to be out to lunch, though. I can't tell whether it's down or just slashdotted.
There's some slashdotters using these providers who are posting to let us all know that their own city is up, and thus @home as a whole must be fine.
That'd be like an elementary-school teacher saying "if you're here, raise your hand" and then noticing that no hands were down, and thus the whole class must be present.
still up here....
"Derp de derp."
also I think the music industy is responsible for them shutting down, they want to end all broadband. It's just a guess, but at lest slightly resonable...or not
I'm just happy I'm still connected!
Hey everyone it's clippy...DIE you metal bastartd
If there is enough dispersed input then its very likely that the whole system is up. Its not like this is done on an individual subscriber basis. Ever heard of statistical sampling!!
Help fight continental drift.
Cox@home in Roanoke VA still up at 3:15AM EST, still here...
Nah, more likely a euphamism for jerking off.
..portland, or is still a-ok.
going to bed now
http://imgfarm.com/ex/ex.html
;) At least...not for me. =)
I am writing this from @home and the statement on this website (from excite) is definately not true in the least
Bradford L.
http://www.modemhelp.net
Well, if EFnet splits, or we see hits on default.ida, we'll know for SURE @home's still up.
Anyone seen either of these things?
Loosing access to major sites.... I can only get to 1/2 the net.
Looks like we dodged the bullet, unless you think that Excite@HOME people will be pulling the plug later then their earliest time that they were allowed to do so. But that just doesn't make sense. If you are shuting down cause of operating costs, you would want to shutdown at the earliest possible time to minimize damages. Yeah I know there are extenuating circumstances here with the negotiations with AT&T, but seriously, if they were gonna do it, they would do it now, not later.
This is strange. I can access most of the Net, but not my co-located server or anything in its data center.
But if I ssh into another box somewhere else, I can get to my server from there!
I'm on AT&T @Home. What the heck??????
@home Service just went out at 12:00 PST. I released my IP, renewed, and I'm now on AT&T's network.
:)
dns resolves to attbi.com
Entirely different subnets. (obviously)
Took about 50 minutes
Some sites don't load. Or is the shack just down right now?
Seems quick, but probably because people haven't released and renewed yet in my neighborhood.
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
WOO-HOO! AT&T seamlessly cut me over to their new network, attbi. DHCP picked it up in about 30 minutes after they unplugged @home.
Can't believe I'm saying this- but god, I love AT&T.
And I can still be an arrogant cable modem bastard.
12.255.???.???
had to change from static to dhcp, but other than that everything seems fine.. out for about 15 minutes at 1:00...
Yhcrana
The voices in my head don't like you
(1:30 pst) I'm still in the @home domain. I can access all the services, email, usenet. My address is the same as it has been for the last month. Hmmm, any one else in the seattle area notice this? Who cares anyways, I'm still alive and kicking on the net!
among many other sites that I can get to from my work shell account. Seems att has some routing issues going on with this mass switchover.
My static IP still works.
:-(
Gaa. this will blow if I have to switch to dhcp.
My connection to @home died at midnight PST. About 30 minutes later my cable modem's online light came back on. I couldn't get anywhere on the web, but simply changing my router to DHCP and restarting put me back online. Yahoo, CNET, Slashdot all accessible. My new email account @attbi.com is working. In in Portland, Oregon for anyone keeping score.
Very smooth. Nice job, AT&T.
I think the process will cost @home greatly. In Canada, Rogers is abandonning @home. Others will look for alternatives too.
The creditors though, will get the company... They just want it to be worth close to $750M. After that, for all they care, liquidating it is preferred if that can let them get their money 1 second sooner than otherwise.
Bond Holders are not interested in maximizing corporate value. They just want it high enough to get paid.
Just check connection still going dns still says "sttln1.wa.home.com" dont know for how long still going strong for now.
Has there been any shut-downs? Has a deal been struck? I'm an @Home customer and my service is still intact as of 7am central. I can't find any news anywhere (not even on my @Home startpage) to tell me what is going on.
I never got any letter or email from AT&T as some of my friends at work did. They all had @Home from when it was offered by TCI where I've only been recently converted from MediaOne when AT&T bought them out and switched us to @home. I'm wondering if I'm just in some lucky circumstance where the outage won't affect me, or if something has happened to stall off @home shutting down for now?
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Hmmm... Reading posts, it looks like some users with AT&T have been moved over to new networks and/or DNS servers. The http://www.attbi.com site, which previously said "this page will appear only if necessary" now contains what looks like a new AT&T Broadband portal.
A little frightening, because that says at least in some way that the old @Home network will not remain intact... and that's what I'm using right now. Same static IP which resolves to etc.etc.home.com, same DNS servers, no interruption in service yet. I don't use the e-mail or www servers, so I can't comment on that stuff...knock on wood.
Here's hoping nothing changes for me, and here's hoping (even more strongly) that if something *does* change, I will get assigned a new static IP, rather than rotating madly with DHCP.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
AT&T's support lines are swamped, even though it's the middle of the night. I managed to get through on chat much more quickly than the support number. (Though the person I spoke with on the phone was much friendlier than the one in chat...)
;-)
Here's what I found out:
+ The chat person said flat-out that AT&T does not support static IPs and that I was basically hosed. She referred me to the Win32 "configurator" executable on the http://newuser.attbi.com website. I didn't bother asking for a linux version.
+ The phone person said that since everything was so new that they didn't have their act together for static IPs yet and to run dynamic for a couple weeks until things settle down.
Either way, I'm stuck on DHCP for a while, but the phone support seemed to imply there was some light at the end of the tunnel once the initial rush of problems are sorted out. For me, this is only an issue for remote access since my internal network is all NATted anyhow.
My guess is that the Excite --> AT&T transition would be completely transparent to those on DHCP who renew their leases after midnight.
And of course, if they try to force me to stay on DHCP, there's always DSL...
But with @home being shutdown that means about a million less spam mails per hour. That'll free up some bandwidth for sure.
Just checked and all is okay! Ya!
Someone must have a dialup backup....
---
I support spreading santorum
Well I can still get to /., however my @home e-mail accounts have been disabled.
From http://198.178.8.101/ AT&T@HOME broadband help site
"The company noted that former MediaOne customers, who are served by the AT&T Broadband network are not affected by today's action. Nor are customers of AT&T Broadband's video or telephony services."
So it sounds like you're safe. I hope so
WBGG
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
Well, I got either brave or stupid since all of these other AT&T users were reporting rebooting and being assigned to a new network within AT&T broadband...
So I rebooted my router to clear everything out and see what I got assigned, and I got assigned nothing... Apparently, the DHCP servers for @home are no longer alive on this network segment, so if you lose your lease, you may or may not be able to get back on via AT&T.
In my case, in order to get back online, I've reconfigured the router to just assign the external ethernet port to a static IP (the @home static IP I've been using all along) rather than using DHCP, so for the time being, I'm back up. @home DNS servers for this area and the gateway I was explicitly assigned at signup appear to still be good. If DNS goes down, I'm going to switch to some AT&T DNS servers... We'll see what happens.
Seems pretty clear though that @home is going down and at some point AT&T users will be transitioning to AT&T broadband. I only hope this line stays live until the transition is complete in this area so that I won't be without net service too long...
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I am an AT&T customer in Portland, Oregon. The service did not work at 05:00 PST. I reset the cable modem. It took about 5 minutes to establish a connection. I then reset my router to pick up the IP address by DHCP. It picked up a new IP address and I was connected. I couldn't find anything on the AT&T website about mail servers, so I called AT&T customer support. Their recording provided the new mail server names. As I use my own server for incoming mail, I changed the SMTP server and I was up and running. All in all, relatively painless. I'll check the speed later to see if there's been any change.
And if you try to complain about it you get moderated -1 offtopic as you did. :-) Slashdot is anything but pro-free speech. Believe me. If anyone knows of a site that is and doesn't let awful moderators control the content, please point it out because slashdot's moderation system is killing any incentive to post here. The people that are getting moderator points are extremely abusing them. I won't even post from my account anymore because I know this will just get moderated down, I'll lose karma, and eventually my posts will be essentially deleted by being posted with a default -1 score. Fucking stupid system if you ask me.
cool, thanks for the info -
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Does that mean my @home connection is a zombie process?
Someone you trust is one of us.
Comcast @home in Indy. I've never used my @home email, so I don't even know *how* to get to it, unless it's the same as the one at excite.com. Oh well, I never cared about it, so I guess I don't care if it goes away.
;)
I was asleep, so I don't know if anything actually switched off, but I didn't have to unplug my cable modem this morning or restart my computer.
Then again, @home told me that to setup properly, my workgroup name had to be @home. I changed it to another name for my home network and the connection still works. Maybe they don't even know I'm out here.
Of course, I only seem to be clocking in at ~900 kbps
At 12:00am Dec 2001 it was like 3.72 million cable modem users all cried out at once and then were silenced just as quickly.
I had to come to work to read slashdot
Well at least now I might have a chance at some cool stuff on Ebay!
At 8:08 am today CST. My connection officially went down. (arlington, texas) They said if the connection went down, the browser would go to the page with a tool to reconfigure the network, which it didn't. But I was smart enough to download Netzero!
Back to the modem... blah.
When Shaw took over the Rogers network in western Canada their very first move was to start moving customers off the super-saturated @Home network onto their own. They continued to use the @Home email and news services but provided their own connectivity. The Shaw system was advertised as 3X faster than Rogers and so far it appears to be true. They use much smaller subnets and a faster modem. There's only so much they can do about the rest of the internet but their corner is in top shape.
Shaw started sending out emails about 8 weeks ago suggesting, asking, begging, and then almost demanding that customers register for @shaw email addresses. Those who complied have nothing to worry about.
home.com is rejecting inbound email with the message "This Message was undeliverable due to the following reason: The user(s) account is disabled." (and yes, the account was receiving mail throughout 11/30).
I can telnet out and ping, but no web. Which wouldn't be a problem except that lynx doesn't support https urls, so I can't log in to Yahoo. Grumble.
I am a Comcast@home subscriber in the Metro Detroit area and had unresponsive DNS this morning but they're responding now.
Speak truth to power.
> server 24.14.191.199
Default Server: proxy1.spngfld1.il.home.com
Address: 24.14.191.199
> www.google.com
Server: proxy1.spngfld1.il.home.com
Address: 24.14.191.199
*** proxy1.spngfld1.il.home.com can't find www.google.com: Query refused
Fortunately, finding another DNS server to use is no big deal. 8)
Still running smooth with cox@home. Haven't seen any other cox customers saying the same here, so i don't know if a shut-down is imminent for me or what... but i'll enjoy it while it lasts.
Lag times for the rest of us should go _waaaay_ down... heh.
The government's moral compass is controlled by GPS.
In times of crises, they alter it to suit their needs.
>So it sounds like you're safe. I hope so :)
No, this appears to not be the case. Lost my service around 9 central.
I'm able to get online through my company's ppp lines. AT&T CustSvc is little more than a busy signal right now. Looks like I am going to be limited to 28.8 up to my company and then out their http-only firewall for the time being.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
At least here in Grand Rapids, MI. It went down at about 9 am EST.
I'm a TSR for Shaw, as well. Edmonton, in fact. Our negotiations with @Home will be short. ;)
'bout time @Home gets what they deserve, from my year and a half of working for Shaw Cable and Videon Cablesystems (both had contracts with @Home [Shaw Edmonton/Videon Winnipeg] and I know firsthand how problematic their "connectivity" truly is).
I was on Mediaone, and the AT&T site said that previous mediaone customers would not be affected. Yeah right. We're dead in the water.
By the way, the tech support guy who credited me a few days of downtime said not to bother calling after tomorrow, since his mediaone office is being shut down as of 9:00am on the second of Dec. This is in the NW suburbs of Chicago. The number to AT&T Broadband is disconnected (at least the one he knew of was).
We're in a Mediacom market (recently acquired from AT&T), and @Home's local DNS servers (identified as "proxy1 and proxy2.iowact1.ia.home.com") are up but refusing queries. If you switch your DNS servers to somewhere else, the network is still up.
I've tried releasing and renewing my DHCP address, but I'm still getting the same IP and DNS servers.
They went uhhhhh belly up? Had service at 12M. Hmmmmm.....glad I didn't shutdown my dial-up now.
I switched to Verizon's DSL here in New England after Mediaone was bought out by AT&T. Since AT&T bought them out, I received nothing but disconnects trying to reach their foreign customer service reps to regain connectivity while being told by a "Level 2 repair tech" that I can't use a router with the service? I could go on and on about how much aggrivation they caused me, but the bottom line is switching to another provider was the best thing I could have done. It also cut down on my Tylenol expenses since the pounding headaches vanished along with AT&T's broadband. I have had it with cable provider's igorance and I couldn't see paying $50 for this frustration each month. Cable is the one service that I can never seem to be happy with, in terms of price vs service. We currently have AT&T as our TV cable service and due to them just raising their rates with their current stranglehold on the market in this area I'm having every piece of AT&T cable removed from this house and I will never pay another dime to AT&T again! I don't trust a company that can't make any revenue with such a strong monopoly and freedom to raise the rates. Hopefully Verizon can suit my needs until we can all get broadband at cost effective FAIR MARKET prices from ISP's who dont suck.
This is great! Their WWW is still up! Check it out. Switch to @Home and "Because the connection is always on, you can walk up to your computer, get the details you want, and be on your way."
Don't beleive me! see it for yourself.
Me, I'm sticking with my "DSL"... still up a running smoothly.
Their marketing folks are soooooooo disconnected from reality.
Well, it's 1136 the morning of 12/01, and my @home cable modem seems to still be working--i'm using it now. Plus, my @home.com e-mail address is still sending and receiving e-mail. So I guess the panic was for nothing.
Still up in tyler texas, but i'm not sure for how much longer. DNS address changed and ip lease went from 12hr to 7 days.
I'm spending about $50 for a cable box with blocked port 80 and 25, and I'm not too happy. I'd go with DSL but guese what? The local phone company has delusions of selling long distance and thinks that DSL is a competitor. They are right of course, and they have the DSL folks by the nads. The circuits are all full here, but I would not count on new ones comming out until the DSL companies are all owned by local phone companies.
Kind of like ATT buying up the cable companies, except ATT does not have any more power over @home but the 25% share they used to crap up the sevicc and drive it bankrupt.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I'm on Comcast in the DC area (suburban MD), and everything appears to be up still, including inbound email. Not sure about outbound email though. A test message to a web email account has been neither delivered nor bounced, but it's only been about 5 minutes so nothing conclusive there.
Is it just me, or does this feel like the climax of WarGames where everybody's waiting to see if the missles are real?
Service is out here in Portland, OR. It's been so long since I've used a dial up account that I forgot how painful it is. Looks like I'll have to go to work to surf if I want to keep my sanity.
Currently DNS is unresponsive on the AT&T/@home network in the Seattle area. I can ping my gateway, and I can ping the name server from a shell account in Texas, but there appears to be no path between the gateway and the name server.
AT&T customer service is unresponsive as well. I can't get to either their phone line or help.broadband.att.com, but given the circumstances that's pretty much to be expected, I suppose.
Someone you trust is one of us.
I'm on Comcast@Home in Philadelphia. Incoming e-mail works fine. Dunno about outgoing, I have my own SMTP server I use. My @Home webspace is still accessible. @Home's newsserver is still up last I checked a few minutes ago. DNS still working fine. I can pull up web pages just fine, though I don't use @Home's web proxy so that may be down, but doubtful since everything else is still up.
And yeah, it does feel like the climax of WarGames. At about 2:30EST this morning, while I was huddled with other @Home'ers on IRC waiting for the Big Wink Out, it felt a lot like Last Night.
~Philly
My inbound home.com mail is working just fine here in Philadelphia, on Comcast. My domain mail is redirected to my home.com address, and I've been getting mail since I woke up an hour ago.
~Philly
I'm on the @home service in Calgary, Alberta, Canada through Shaw Cable. As of 10:00 MST it looks like @home is gone. My @home web sites are offline, the mail and news server is down. Luckily shaw.ca here in Calgary (and other Canadian cities) had setup a way for users to move to the shaw.ca service so I still have cable services. Just no more @home.
liB
I am also a comcast customer in PA, and have not experienced any trouble. email, and www are both up, but I am not using the @home dns servers.
Forgot to mention that I'm on a static IP here, so if there was any attempt at some kind of switchover, I'm guessing I'd find out about it the hard way.
~Philly
Woke to no network. Rebooted cable modem which
is still trying. Checking the cable modem
using 192.168.100.1 shows:
Acquire Downstream Channel -Done
Obtain Upsteam Parameters -Done
Establish IP Connectivity using DHCP -In Progress
Signal Show:
:
Power Level - 0 dBmV
Charter@Home died sometime between 1AM and 8AM this morning in The Dalles, OR. Now to wait for my Pipleline cd...
Still up on Comcast@home in NM.
According to slashdot:
"A bankruptcy court ruled today that the @Home network will be shutdown at midnight"
Slashdot and real news agencys such as MSNBC have been very irresponsible in their reporting.
The judge did not order @HOME to shutdown (as reported on MSNBC) the judge ruled that @HOME COULD shutdown.
To me highly innaccurate and irresponsible journalism is more news worthy than a possible hicup from an ailing cable provider.
i agree totally, i gave up home phone service after getting cable, and a cell phone. i will definitely be sol, since the reason i cancelled phone service was after a dispute with the local telco here and i decided to boycott their service (so no switching back either)
Whoa, be careful, not all DSL providers will
give you a static IP. And be *very* careful;
I signed up with Earthlink DSL and specified that
only wanted static IP DSL and they sent everything
and it was all ready to go but I called and called
and emailed and finally they said no "we don't offer
static IP in your area". They still have not refunded my money or sent an RMA for the equipment.
They refuse to let you stop your account and will put you on hold and cut you off. They are evil and stupic. Buyer beware. I'm letting my credit card
company deal with it for now (it's been 4 months
of hassle and lies).
I live in central illinois. and my cable modem has been shut down.
12:45PM South FL and i'm still here! *jinx block enabled*
Hrrm... I usually just sign my name.
Still got my @Home IP, still receive @Home mail (I just sent myself a test message from a non-@Home account), still using @Home name resolvers. aprox. 9:50 PST here as I type this. I wonder how long this is gonna last...
The service is dead in Champaign, but I just called the cable company, they said they renegotiated this morning, and service will be back in an hour.
They called and said they are crediting my account for 2 days for every day of lost service and that I would get a call in the next week to tell me when it was fixed.
currently im @Home subscriber. i was pissed off when i realized that my service was shut down... i fooled around a little and realized that the service itself is working, just @home dns servers are down. what does that mean? use some other dns server ;-)
ozzy
Help! My cable is down so I'm stuck in the college computer lab :-(
Despite all efforts, my cable access now appears to be completely down (1000 hrs PST).
My address has always been dynamic, so that route is out. I've rebooted and reset everything, without joy. The cable light on the modem blinks continuously.
Luckily, I've always kept my dial-up access with a small, local ISP who uses nothing but Linux (and never goes down). Slow but reliable.
I can't access help.broadband.att.com to find out what to do.
Phoning ATT@Home support numnber (and entering my phone number) I get a recording that tells me my service will be restored within three days (business days? it doesn't say) and that I will be called with further information. Oh, and the part about crediting me two days for each day I am down.
So it's back to the old days of dial-up for me, but at least I'm connected (and I never used @Home e-mail for anything important).
Cheers.
This morning any address I went to simply took me to a page that explains how to set up my computer to use a new AT&T Broadband Internet service. After changing network settings on my computers, all is well.
Mine is off in Portland, OR
/.-tted :-(
Trying to get access through dialup to AT&T sites that give information to be changed fail; the sites seem to be
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
I talked to Comcast today - they say that a DHCP server is out in michigan (hy my area.) It seems that they are lying about what is going on. Only DNS servers are down (I am using my works DNS server heh heh) Unless they use DHCP to address the DNS servers (that would be dumb - but I wouldn't put it past them) It looks like that @Home is trying to pull the plug in the most logical way to get everyone up and running without having to readdress everyone.
It would bet that people who still have a connection are in a partially migrated network so a DNS server that is owned by their local ISP / cable company is acting as a secondary.
Jesse Wolfe Sr. Manager Systems Integration
so what DNS server are you using? Do you mind posting it?
Its still working here. Seems most people are having problems with DNS servers, but the one I use if run by Comcast, and it still seems to be fine. I still have my static IP as well....
See if the admin of whatever server you're using can recompile Lynx with SSL support. The most recent version (2.8.4) doesn't require any patches to support SSL (https servers, etc.), just a current installation of OpenSSL.
Yahoo mail's been bumming me out recently too...even when you try a standard login, the submit button for your id and password points to an https server.
I'm using AT&T in PDX and besides having to switch from a static IP to a dynamic IP, the transition went fairly smoothly.
I still have one hiccough: ssh seems to be cut off for *some* versions of ssh.
Here are the symptoms:
I try to ssh into my personal box:
bash$ ssh foo.bar.net
ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host
I try to ssh into the box through the SSL backdoor on port 443:
bash$ ssh foo.bar.net -p 443
ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host
I try telnetting to port 22:
bash$ telnet foo.bar.net 22
Trying 0.0.0.0...
Connected to foo.bar.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
Connection closed by foreign host.
I try telnetting to port 443 and I get the same thing. However https sites work fine. So it can't be a blocked port. Since telnetting doesn't even bring up the SSH version id, it doesn't seem like it's a problem with client.
So, I try ssh-ing to my old school address:
bash$ ssh old.school.edu
user@old.school.edu's password:
Woohoo! Now from there I can easily access foo.bar.net with no problems at all. So I tried checking to see what the servers sent that might explain it. It turns out that they send different id strings at the start:
foo.bar.net: SSH-1.5-OpenSSH-1.2.3
old.school.edu: SSH-1.99-2.0.12 (non-commercial)
Now comes the tricky part. I noticed that a connection I had open *before* the switchover was still active this morning. And *that* was an ssh connection to foo.bar.net. So, I tried setting up a IP alias on eth0 (eth0:1) that used the old settings from pre-switchover times. Then I made a static route on the new interface to foo.bar.net. And now SSH to foo.bar.net works _fine_.
So, I'm thinking that AT&T is blocking some ssh connections. The question is, "Why?" I haven't had time to try to set up a fake server that just spews the SSH welcome message and see if it gets blocked, but I am going to investigate further.
... techs (and recorded message) saying it is a Phoenix problem that engineers are working on but is not related to the ongoing negotiations with Excite (still not resolved but according to Cox, Excite hasn't pulled the plug yet ...) ...
Don't know what to believe ...
AZspot
Welcome manders1 ...
f ro m=chat
Connecting to server. Please wait...
Connected to athchat02.broadband.att.com
Sat, December 01 2001 12:11PM Mountain Standard Time
https://help.broadband.att.com/index.jsp?pushed
Hello! Welcome to AT&T @Home's Online Customer Support Center. Your session ID # is 1479181.
We apologize for the delay and appreciate your patience. A message from a customer care specialist should appear in the chat window shortly.
To quickly find answers to questions you may have about your AT&T@Home service, check out our Fast Answers to Questions section above.
To view any possible service interruptions in your area and to access other timesaving tools, click on the Service Tools section on the left navigation panel above.
In-Angela Stone has joined this session!
You say: Hello
In-Angela Stone says: Thank you for contacting AT&TBroadband Internet.My name is Angela; I understand you are having issue with connectivity.I would be glad to assist you with the same.
You say: I'd like to discontinue my service
In-Angela Stone says: In order to assist you with this, may I please have your first and last name, telephone number, complete home address, primary login,
and personal access code?
You say: Michael Anderson
You say: (xxx) xxx-xxxx
You say: 123 somewhere Circle, San Ramon ca 94583
You say: I dont "log in" to @Home
You say: I believe my user name is manders1
In-Angela Stone says: Thank you for the information.Please stand by for a moment.
You say: I use my own mail server etc so i've never needed my @home log in
In-Angela Stone says: May I know if you are sure you want to disconnect the services?
You say: I dont know, may you?
You say: whats your question?
In-Angela Stone says: Michael, may I know why do you want to discontinue the services?
You say: I've paid you guys probably $1500 dollars or more over the last three years or so....
You say: Now I am disconnected
You say: YES I want to discontinue my service DUH!
In-Angela Stone says: I am sincerely sorry for all the trouble this .
You say: fortunately my Telocity back up DSL service is functioning fine so that I
can 'chat' with you about being disconnected
You say: can we get on with it?
In-Angela Stone says: Due to Excite@Home's bankruptcy filing, we are transitioning your service to an AT&T network.
You say: Please disontinue my account NOW!
In-Angela Stone says: During this transition, your service will be temporarily unavailable.
You say: what am I talking to eliza here?
You say: The humor is probably lost on you
You say: please disconnect me
You say: (from the @home network)
You say: quit billing me
You say: stop my service
In-Angela Stone says: Okay Michael, kindly standby.
You say: Today is Saturday, December 01, 2001
You say: The day on which I discontinue my @Home/ATT Broadband service
You say: The day on which I quit paying $58.79 a month
You say: Thats an extrea $705.00 dollar per year for ME
In-Angela Stone says: I am sincerely sorry for all the trouble this has caused you.
You say: Boy for $705 per year you'd expect REALLY good service
You say: You don't need to apologize. It has caused me no trouble because I have a backup service
You say: I dont trust you guys
You say: It amuses me thats all
You say: ATT loses $705 not me why should I be upset?
You say: I still have service as you can see
You say: I've already told you what I want
You say: I assume you are handling it
You say: what reason is there for me to need to
You say: "hang on"
In-Angela Stone says: Michael, I have forwarded your issue to the required department.They will do the needful for you.
You say: OK fine so are we done or what?
In-Angela Stone says: I have forwarded your request , now they will do the needful Michael.
You say: also there is nothing 'needful' other than to quit billing me which will happen in any event once I inform my card company of my desires
You say: What more do you need of me?
You say: Hello?
In-Angela Stone says: Michael, as I have forwarded your request.
You say: Yes?
In-Angela Stone says: They will do the needful.
You say: Youill discontinue my service?
You say: yes?
You say: is that it?
You say: are we done?
You say: Is this a computer?
You say: I am talkin to eliza aren't I
You say: how humiliating
In-Angela Stone says: Micheal you are chatting with a humann being.
You say: prove it
You say: You still sound like eliza
In-Angela Stone says: Michael, yes they will discontinue your services.
You say: Thanks, so are we done?
You say: Come on I need 'closure'
In-Angela Stone says: Yes Michael.
In-Angela Stone says: Thank you for contacting AT&TBroadband Internet, goodbye.
You say: excellent, bye
The session has en
From the "Network Status" query on AT&T's site:
The following service interruption is known in your area. Repairs have already begun to resolve this issue.
Type of Interruption
Service Interruption on Network
Resolution Status
Technicians notified at Sat Dec 01 10:00:00 MST 2001
No completion time known at this time.
I got up this morning an noticed my linux box churning away on the hard drive -- turns out att rolled dhcp last night, and while a got a new ip and entries for dns servers in resolv.conf, the routes hadn't updated properly. One reboot and I'm up. For those of you that were on at&t, here's some info:
AT&T's new user page is up, and so is their help page, but who knows for how long (these were both down last night).
The new user page has the info about how to change your settings to get on attbi. If you are using windows, just use the auto config utility. If that doesn't work, or if this page goes down again, here's the info I got:
1. Use dhcp (it looks like the IP's are really dynamic now -- you get a new one every time your lease expires, unlike @home. This will be very annoying for some people, depending on how long the leases are. The lease time I got was 3600. I am assuming that is in seconds, so that's hour. Maybe they'll change this later?)
2. The dns servers I got were:
204.127.198.4
63.240.76.4
12.242.16.50
12.242.16.34
3. The mail and news servers are:
POP3:mail.attbi.com
SMTP:mail.attbi.com
news:netnews.attbi.com
4. Email is now username@attbi.com
As I am writing this, I got an automated call from at&t saying that service is up in my area.
Hang on, Seattle, I'm sure it's comming!
I've been stuck with a dynamic IP on comcast@home for a while now, but easy external access is possible, even if you're using a router for NAT on your internal network. Get a hostname from somebody like dyndns.org(myhostname.dyndns.org) and point it to whatever your IP is today. Then get a client to monitor your IP and notify dyndns.org when your IP changes. They have a nice interface set up for poor dynamic ip folks like us to programatically update our address. Set it up to run frequently with cron. I use ipcheck (ipcheck.sourceforge.net) with a Linksys router and it has been working flawlessly for nearly 8 months now. When you want to get to your box, you just use your hostname instead of your IP.
I'm still connected in indy-- it was working at 3am, and still up when I got up this morning. No idea about the mail, I've never used it, and I don't know what I did with all the mailserver info, etc...
Went to bed last night, everything was working fine, and with no call from AT&T like they claimed they'd give if there would be a problem, I figured all was well. Gee, that was silly of me. Based on some logs I checked this morning, my service was abruptly killed at 7:00 am EST this morning. Of course, then around noon I get an automated call from AT&T telling me my "service will be up again soon" and that I'll get another call telling me what to do "later next week". So much for their FAQ explaining how my service wasn't going to be interrupted.
This morning my AT&T was out, I couldn't access DNS or seem to get out at all even though the modem lights were still on (as normal). I am using OpenBSD as a firewall, so I rebooted it to see if it could reconnect. It didn't get a DHCP response at and now it doesn't have an IP address. And now the modem receive light is flashing, so I assume it is no longer even connected to the network. I've tried to get on the website that they said to check in their letter (http://help.broadband.att.com) but it must be getting pounded, because it always times out. Even if I could get on the site I'm not sure how much help that would be since they aren't going to have info for OpenBSD anyway. ;-)
If we were close enough to the CO for DSL we'd drop them like a ton of bricks. This is just YARTHTCC (Yet Another Reason To Hate The Cable Companies.)
If the above 2 commands still give you the same system, then you should be ok and it is someother type of issue, but if they are not the same, then that is the cause.
Anyway, it should be:
nslookup localhost
nslookup localhost_IP_address
IF A CUSTOMER HAS QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CHANGES TO @HOME
PLEASE REFER THEM TO
1-888-262-6300
OR
HTTP:\\HELP.BROADBAND.ATT.COM
Also when you have a chance plz call the customer service # 0500 to educate yourselves on what the customers are hearing regarding @ home over the IVR. After choosing language press pound and you can hear the same message the customer hears. thanks Joey
@Home service will be restored on 12/3 (Monday) night.
The @home customers will have a new E-mail address.
It is as follows --- Username@attbi.com.
Collecting data is only the first step toward wisdom. But sharing data is the first step toward community
I agree. Not amusing at all.
If you're one of the many people that were disconnected today, here's a little something you can try to get back online. If your modem still has sync (cable modem showing it's online - or solid cable light - depending on what modem you have), but you have no connectivity, set your IP address statically, and specify non-@Home DNS numbers. This got me back online. Might be worth your while to try it.
You are correct. AT&T has the forward and reverse DNS out of sync. I just changed the /etc/hosts.allow to include my (now dynamic) IP and all is well.
Thanks!
That's your excuse? Pretty weak. I'm rereading your log here. In-Angela Stone says: May I know if you are sure you want to disconnect the services? You say: I dont know, may you? I don't get why she deserved this. I just don't see it at all. Even if you did have to wait '3 minutes'. She was just entering your data, that can take a bit sometimes. BTW, those were 3 internet minutes. Meaning while those 3 minutes were going by, you could have been checking out Slashdot or a forum or something. It's not like she put your life on hold for 3 minutes. Nope, it's pretty clear, you were just being s jerk. I can see why you chose to use the net chat instead of using the phone like anybody else would have. I don't think I'd have the never to talk to somebody that way over the phone. It's a lot easier to hide behind text. Let me give you a piece of advice, never give customer service people crap. There's no reason for it! No matter what silly thing a coprporation does, its never the person who's taking your call who did it. I can understand you being upset. But if I were the one on the chat line, I'd likely have 'oops' misfiled your request so that you'd have to call in again. I'll tell you what does work, though. It's really simple really. Do you want to get your point across that you're miffed about something a company has done? Instead of being a self rigtheous smart ass like you were and smarting off to the customer care rep, instead say this "Do you mind if I vent?" "What's the difference here?", you ask. The difference is that the customer service rep doesn't feel like he or she is the one under attack. When that's established, they may actually help you. Instead of thinking "Man, it wouldn't surprise me at all if this guy didn't have a girlfriend", they'd think "oh... yes I can see how that would be upsetting. I should fire off a note to my supervisor." Don't believe me? My cell phone provider (which, coincidentally is AT&T) helped me out once. I changed my rate plan. Unfortunately, when I did this I didn't realize that the calls I had already made would go to that one instead. Result? $250 phone bill. This was NOT AT&T's fault, it was mine. I called up customer service and had a chat with them. Now I could have done the "well AT&T didn't notify me of something, its your fault I'm angry wah wah boo hoo" bit, acting like I'm a victim. Instead, I explained the situation very nicely to the care rep and asked her what she could do to help. And you know what? She did help. She said "let's pretend you haven't changed the rate plan yet..." and my bill dropped $100. If I had pulled a stunt like you had, she'd have just said "sorry, this is policy. You signed it. T.S. Thank you for choosing AT&T."
"Derp de derp."
Sorry all, didn't preview it before I posted it. Didn't realize that all my pretty linebreaks were gone! *hides, embarrased*
"Derp de derp."
I'm in Battle Creek, Michigan and my @Home service went down about 9am on dec 1st. I looked at my logs and around 6am, the DHCP client was requesting a new lease and at 9am it indicated it couldn't reach the server. I know others have indicated using different DNS servers would help but that's j ust not the case here. The cablemodem light was connect light remained lit until about 5PM later that day. Today the light just blinks and power cycling won't bring it back. Glad I got my dial-up account still!
Minor update to the above.. The @home DNS servers seem as though they are working for me once against, though reposnse times for pings are up in the 800-1000ms range. Of course, I've since installed a caching DNS server on my end of things, so I'm not all that worried..
I'm here on the west side of Albuquerque, NM and as far as I know, I've never lost service.
Here's hoping it stays that way. Otherwise it's back to playing Quake III with a ping of around 600... I really enjoyed lag-free playing (even if all I ever was was cannon fodder)
I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that you're an idiot!
So, T1 rates are overpriced, and the true cost of bandwidth is vastly lower.
They may be overpriced but you're vastly underestimating the cost of bandwidth.