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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.
I won't be able to read Slashdot tommorow!
*goes and collapses on the floor*
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"
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Yes.. but isn't that how the entire @home network works? It's all different cable copmanies with some shared backbone.
Like, the IP addresses belong to @home, no?
Certainly, the infrastructure in a given place belongs to that cable company, and they have the equipment to proceed, but not necessarily the upstream network links, which may belong to excite..
By the way, this is not a cutting-edge yuppie complex- we live in an older residential area and many of our neighbors are little old ladies who emigrated from eastern Europe post WWII. They don't seem to hog the bandwidth much...
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
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"
Good riddance???
Congratulate me.. I am going off the net tonight. Why would I be going off the net in this time that I have to send back graded work (I grade for professors) and I have to register for classes (online only) AND I am going to have to d/l all my coursework/study sheets for my exams that start next Thurs? Why am I going off? Because I am an @home user..
How about this... I am happy that you dont give a damn about @home users leaving -- all because you are getting some spam from @home users. And if I suggested I hope that whatever-state-your-in takes away your drivers license b/c there have been too many "drunk drivers" from your state/country/whatever, I suppose I would be correct by your logic.
Get over it. There are more people losing access tonight than your spammers... people who dont even have modems in their computers any more, who have depended on a dedicated connection for the last K years are losing it too...
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?
You're exactly right in your thoughts.
If I remember correctly, the analogy is similar to comparing a phone company and a dialup ISP. The cable companies are like the phone companies, they provide the wiring, the hardware, and the ability to connect. @Home is the ISP, providing the IPs and servers and connection to the Internet as a whole. The cable companies signed on with @Home, and once @Home is gone the hardware's still there but there's no server to go to. It's a modem without an ISP, simple as that.
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
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.
No, Canada is fine. All Canadian cable ISPs who previously used @Home (Rogers, Shaw, and Cogeco) have already either completely severed their ties, or have a backup plan in place.
----
Bryan Samis
http://www.thesamis.net
Who will be most upset by the @home outage?
45% of cablemodem users != 45% of users
Hopefully (for everyone involved), more responsible providers will take its place soon.
Yes you will UNLESS you use their "Convert to Power Link" function, here.
/gleffler
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.
Now that Northpoint et al. are gone, it seems that the expansion of the Baby Bell DSL networks is again at a snail's pace. Some people (myself) who were successfully using Northpoint for months still aren't allowed to have BellAtlantic (err, Verizon) DSL.
Thank you iComcast.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
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
I grade Mathematica notebooks.. we use the Mathematica and Math Everywhere cd/work to teach calc1 and calc2, and sometimes calculus 3...
:/
The average notebook size (what they turn in -- electronic notebook with their work in it) is 3.43 mb.. I have 15 notebooks to grade per class... do the math..
DSL - tried to get it a year ago, and I'm just a bit too far away from the CO to get service. It will probably take 3 visits and 3 mornings off of work to verify that I can't get DSL - and even then, I'll never have official word, just the hearsay from a disgruntled tech.
802.11b wireless - Several providers? What part of the country is that again? Here in my corner of the midwest, there are a few less options.
Satellite - "Games are wasteful of valuable bandwidthm especially given the current shortage". Guess us gamers should go the e-ghetto where we belong...
T1 - This would be a great option if a) I had the expertise to set this up in a timely manner b) I had the capital to pay for the initial equipment c) I knew ANY neighbors in a mile radius that would pay for a connection and the 802.11b equipment. Sorry, it's not really viable right now.
Dialup. See Satellite.
Sorry. I got a cable modem because I like an always on connection, and I really enjoy online games. I kept it because it really enhances the online gaming experience, even on my (comparatively) slow machine, and it helps facilitate my new linux habit (45 minutes to download an ISO image from a public server).
But hey, thanks for making me feel like an idiot for going for the fast, easy, cheap option and not investigating the other lame-ass offers in town.
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
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.
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
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...
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.
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
Time for a Congressional bailout.
P.S. It's for the children...
That is all.
actually, this isn't quite true. while the excite@home is the parent company of the @home network, that does not mean that when excite@home goes down that all of at&t's network will go down. they have been planning for this in the event that they were not able to buy excite's network, which now seems to be a likely situation. so while they have been trying to buy @home, and sell their cable, they have also been building their own network. this is no guarantee that the service will not go down, but they claim they have some areas ready for their new service.
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
According to the articles, @home has 4.1 million cable modem users.
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.
Let's take these one at a time, shall we?
Yup. Lots of options. Hell, I was lucky to even get cable. All of these companies offering DSL or cable wonder why they fail miserably when people can't even sign up if they want to. Makes sense to me...
You can't tell me they weren't making a profit with at least 4 MILLION customers, especially when they're operating over ALREADY EXISTING cable infrastructure! What are they building their equipment out of, 24k gold?
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
Sure, playing games will be slow, but games are wasteful of valuable bandwidth, especially given the current shortage.
Fuck you, too, elitist moron!
Edith Keeler Must Die
Thank god for AOL Time Warner, and their partnering with RoadRunner! (Dosen't AT&T own RoadRunner now, or something?..)
</sarcasm>
Had to say it.
Hey, slashdot coders, if i wanted to have to type & lt; and & gt; all the time I wouldn't use the 'Plain Ol Text' option as my default...
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.
So, in short, yes, Excite@Home sucks rocks, but the infrastructure they are running on here in Massachusetts is top rate, and was built out by MediaOne which unfortunately got gobbled up by AT&T. If I could pick and choose a better ISP and keep my cable service, I would in a second (an ISP that doesn't force me to pretend I'm rebooting my theoretical Win98 box which is theoretically connected directly to the cable modem rather than through a firewall, to refresh a DHCP address, so I can prove to them that they have a router on the fritz).
damn you, you had to post it on /. It's slashdotted now!
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
"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.
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
Way back when, when Bell Canada started rolling out their "High Speed Edition" phone service; i.e. DSL, the war with Rogers@Home was vicious. A series of biting commercials went back and fourth, with Bell pointing out that a cable modem runs off a shared trunk, while a DSL modem is a 'dedicated connection.' One day, Rogers comes out with a simple commercial. A man walks out onto a stage, just a simple white backdrop. He says 'Our competition would have you believe that when you're on a cable modem, the Internet is slow because the cable modem is shared.' Slight pause, cocks his head. 'The Internet is slow because the Internet is shared.' Shakes his head a bit, walks off.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
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
Those are ridiculous prices come on. For the people who are just checking their email, $40?
I said checking their e-mail and some web surfing.
As to how ridiculous the prices are, people pay $24 for AOL and then spend $15 for a phone line. $40 seems pretty reasonable compared to that. We are talking about increasing the speed by a factor of ten or more!
And you object to $90 for a static IP and T1 download speeds? Ever price a T1? Try $800/month. Cable modems are a miracle technology and you should be thrilled to see bandwidth like this for so cheap.
If your attitude is typical, it's no wonder that @Home is going belly-up.
I've been a loyal @Home customer for several years, and it's inconceivable that they wou
Damned, there goes all the promotions I receive for teen sex, viagra, spy software, herbal remedies, and all these great ways to make money at home.
This will hurt, as I've had the same email address for over 4 years.
-Aaron
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
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.
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
Some good points from other users.
Also remember that @Home users are some of the most clueless Windows users around -- sorry, but not a crime -- and many of them have been infected with Nimda and other worms and still don't know it, which leads to tons of the sort of network traffic you describe.
If Microsoft wasn't so brain-dead about security you may have had less to worry about.
As far as spammers go... Sorry, but you'll never get rid of spam, ever. It's here to stay. The SPAM we see and filter on our network comes from pretty much every other network everywhere, and we've given up on abuse@any network because these days most everybody ignores it, having thrown up their hands and given in.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
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.
I live in a newish city. I know nothing about the DSL technology, but we've been told we can't get DSL most anywhere except in the heart of the business district because entire neighborhoods are already on some kind of digital multiplexer for their phone service sharing a single copper line, and the technology doesn't yet exist (and apparently may never exist) to run DSL over these types of lines to each and every business or residence.
802.11b ISPs? What are you smoking and/or where do you live!?
Satellite doesn't work. I've seen it and used it with friends. It's about as slow as 56k and sometimes even worse for network lag and it seems to have horrible reliability compared to other connectivity methods.
T1... who's going to run this local ISP? We all have jobs... Who's going to donate the space in their house for the equipment? I certainly don't want to be fielding angry calls from my neighbors if I accidentally screw the gateway up or spill laundry detergent on it or something and lose them their e-mail for a day, and I don't think any of them have the technical knowledge to operate this "mini-ISP."
Dialup... 56k scads faster than Cable? Are you crazy? I pull down 2-3Mbits over my cable connection *all the time* and our loop is nearly full! I download ISO images at 550kb/sec! That's more than 100 times the speed of 56k under the best of conditions! Not to mention that nearly all of the local ISPs are either gone or *very* expensive now. Our most prominent local ISP is running $39.95/month for 56k dialup! Add to that the cost of a second phone line once again and it's actually *more* expensive than cable.
As remarkable as it sounds, many of the people in our neighborhood (myself included) may simply travel back in time to 1995 and have *no* ISP, using the library's computers or UUCP accounts on local BBSs (there are still one or two to offer it) instead.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
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?
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They'll just move. They always do. And it's not fucking fair to those of us that don't spam.
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.
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.
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.
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
Howdy Halton regional neighbour! Agreed: Cogeco seems to be an extremely competent broadband provider and I am very happy to be with them during this time. It's the clown companies like Rogers that seemed to deal with the situation by covering their eyes that will suffer if the switch does turn off this evening.
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
Yeah, I must agree (One day it could be you too).
One day it *was* me, our AT&T@Home service was sold, traded, or whatever to a very lame cable operator who raised prices and capped download speeds. I never imagined that the day would come when I would be missing AT&T. I used to get a 3 Mbps connection regularly. Now I pay $15 more per month for something *they* call 1/2 T1 speed, 800K down, 200K up, not very broad broadband (See it here). It is better than Qwest's DSL and the only other game in town. Count yer blessings and pray AT&T doesn't sell you to someone else, or put some screws to you one day down the road.
NULL
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
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
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
Im going to miss downloading kernels
/usr/src/linux, like linux-2.4.14.tar.gz. Check it:
/usr/src
/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4
.bz2 patch files, replace the zcat commands with bzcat. bz2's are smaller, but when I got 2.4.16, there were no bz2's at the time.
Why are you being so dramatic, dude? Can't download kernels anymore? Cripes, just download the patches! Put a full kernel tar.gz to start with in
cd
tar zxvf linux-2.4.14.tar.gz
(if it untars to "linux-2.4" then, mv linux-2.4 linux-2.4.14)
ln -s linux-2.4.14 linux
ncftp ftp.us.kernel.org
cd
bin
get patch-2.4.15.gz
get patch-2.4.16.gz
quit
zcat patch-2.4.15.gz | patch -p0 -f
zcat patch-2.4.16.gz | patch -p0 -f
head linux/Makefile
(check to make sure the version, patchlevel, and sublevel are 2, 4, and 16 respectively)
rm -f linux
mv linux-2.4.14 linux-2.4.16
ln -s linux-2.4.16 linux
tar cf linux-2.4.16.tar linux-2.4.16
gzip linux-2.4.16.tar &
voila, you have just updated your 2.4.14 kernel tarball into a 2.4.16 for the incredibly long download of about 2 megs. If you download the
Intelligent Life on Earth
However my car is turning into a pumpkin
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
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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.
just a note to everyone... the time is in PST not EST or CST
for EST its 3:00 am for CST its 2:00 am.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
- 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.
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.
Hey man, I sympathise if you're going to lose your fast connection, but ease off a little, huh? Those of us in the UK are lucky to have any sensible alternative to a 56k modem, and over here we don't get free local calls either. Your "option for checking e-mail, emergencies only" is all we've ever had, and we pay nearly as much for it as you guys pay for your cable modems, too.
It sucks that you might lose out here, and I'm sorry. But I'm getting really irritated hearing you all bitch about something when you don't realise how lucky you are to have had it at all. It was obviously never going to last in the state it was in, any more than all those .bombs would ever have had the value they were traded at. If you all disconnected your fixed lines and threw out your modems, well, again, I'm sorry, but quit bitching and think first next time, OK?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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
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).
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.
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
It just means @Home didn't pull the plug tonight. The court just allowed them to dump their contracts with the cable companies. That gave them the option to pull the plug, but they weren't required to.
It does sound like shutting down the service is a trump card to get everyone's attention while they thrash through some very tough bargaining. However, we aren't out of the woods yet.
@Home, please please please don't shut off your service until I get a job! I NEED my dice.com!
(And yes, I'm sorry I didn't apply for your senior sysadmin position. You are bankrupt, after all. 8)
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
I can just see a head IRC moderator lowering his head and saying... "I just had a terrible feeling.. as if millions of subscribers screamed in terror and were soon silenced"....
I ditched @home for DSL on 9/30, spooked that they'd shut down port 80 on me -- I run essential services from home. They are still charging me for service though! When I called in shock and amazement, I was informed that it is actually POLICY to continue charging the end user for a few months after service is disconnected and the modem is returned. See, they can't close your account or some crap like that until they can get a van out to your place to fiddle around on the phone pole or wherever their hardware is. THEIR hardware. Once they fix that, they refund the charges.
It's the stupidest thing I have ever heard, but repeated calls have verified it as true. If I have to call checking on their progress any more I will be on a first-name basis with their billing staff.
I'm glad to see the bastards go under. (easy to say now that I am in Speakeasy DSL land though)
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
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.
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...
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
Does that mean my @home connection is a zombie process?
Someone you trust is one of us.
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.
>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.
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
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
Well, I guess my question has been answered. AT&T @Home went cold about 9 this mornin in Chicago.
:-(
The message on their support line used to say 'go to help.broadband.att.com for details' (gee thanks, that helps a lot!) now they say we are sorry for the inconvenience, we will switch you to our new service within 7 days, but you get a credit worth two days' service for each day you are out. Whoopee
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
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
... 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
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...
Were the first two DNS servers there before, with @Home?
/sbin/pump, and I was back up except for DNS. Leaving the first two servers in resolv.conf, it just hangs on DNS queries. When I take them out and just have the 12.* ones in, I get an immediate "host not found" response. Any ideas???
I just ran
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.