Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

@Home Network Approaching Shutdown

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-code-red dept.

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.

3 of 797 comments (clear)

  1. I'm sorry, but -- Good Riddance. by Snowfox · · Score: 1, Flamebait
    Something like a quarter of the smtp, pop2, pop3 and exec probes against my servers come from these users. Reporting users to the abuse accounts nets no response whatsoever, and many of the same guys keep coming back over and over like clockwork, which tells me that they don't give a damn what their users do.

    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.

  2. Who cares ? by LiteForce · · Score: 1, Flamebait
    Over 90% of the port probes, failed SMTP relay attempts and other malicious shit come into my network from 24/8.

    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
  3. The World's Worst ISP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    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!