Slashdot Mirror
Some People @Home, Some Not @Home
11thangel writes: "Dotcomscoop is reporting that Excite@home has released a statement saying that they have discontinued service to AT&T, as it's certain negotiations will be fruitless. All others are still at the bargaining table. Earlier statements indicated that an example would be made out of one provider, AT&T being the obvious target. Everyone else keep your fingers crossed." There's a Reuters story about AT&T being unplugged. Various submissions have noted that some people who still have connectivity have lost their DNS servers. Just add "64.28.67.150 slashdot.org" to your hosts file and you should be good to go. :)
I'm here in Iowa (under AT&T @Home), and my DNS has been down all day. It came back up an hour ago.
:-(
My mail server reports that my account doesn't exist
Overall, I am impressed how AT&T has moved all its customers off Excite and onto their own network... I dunno how they did it.
I clicked on the link in the main article, and what are the words I see? "Overwhelming traffic to DotcomScoop.com has created technical problems leading to data loss. Recent news stories published on the site are lost for the time being. We will continue to provide updates as news warrants."
/. effect hits them. I feel their pain :)
And this is before the
Just to be fair to the trolls...
Coincidently (?) their building sign only has "Excite@" illuminated (the "home" portion is dark)... or maybe it's irony... sarcasm ? ^_^
The only thing I'm really worried about right now is losing my e-mail account and having friends get their messages bounced before I can tell them my new address (whatever that may be). It's almost as bad as going through a change of area code with the phone company, only here, the grace period is a matter of days.
Is your company running tools written by ma
I changed DNS to the old Mediaone servers and I'm working again. My DHCP-generated IP address changed. Mail and news are not up yet.
Details on how to change are here. I assume other folks can replace the "ga" in the URL with their state or city name. There was an email sent out last week with more details.
Guys.. you can use ANY dns server on the internet pretty much. Might be that tinsy bit extra resolving latency, but the crisis is minimal.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
If you are one of the many disconnected today, here's something you can try to get back online:
If your modem still has sync (cable modem is showing online, or solid cable light - depending on what modem you have) but have you no connectivity, set your IP and host information in statically, but specify non-@Home DNS numbers.
This got me back online, so it might be worth your while to try it youself.
I've got access through Comcast@Home here in Richmond, VA. We're still up but I keep the green lights in the corner of my eye.
Mail, News, and DNS servers are all still active on their original IPs. We have not received any official email from Comcast concerning the status of their network. They're either solid with their own network and backbone, or they're just waiting to die. Either way, I wish we would get informed.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
Insight Communications has released the following statement today to their customers:
Insight, along with other cable operators, is currently in the tail end of positive negotiations with @Home. At this time, we fully expect to maintain connectivity for our Insight@Home customer base.
We recognize that certain communities in our Central Illinois service areas have seen an interruption in service this morning due to an @Home error. We are working diligently to correct this issue and expect full service to be restored today. We apologize to these customers for any inconvenience this has caused.
Thank you for your continued patience as we work through this issue.
use this if your dns is not working.......
:) and a wonderfully easy address to remember as well. I use it as my secondary dns on the rare occasions when my isp's dns (san.rr.com) is choking.
4.2.2.1 (vnsc-pri.sys.gtei.net)
yes, thats a real dns server
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
4.2.2.2
4.2.2.3
provided to you by verizon and painfully easy to remember.
I'm still shocked about how this is happening in the USA. I mean, if it happened in some eastern bloc country, or some nation in Africa that is very corrupt / piss poor, I could understand, but here?
No offense to people in those countries, btw, it seems that the telecommunications infrastructure in most countries is beter than that of the usa.
I honestly don't understand why the service costs so much in the usa - In BC, Canada, 1.5mb down / 768 up, 2 static ip's for $40 a month CANADIAN! Here, I pay $55ish for a whole 768dn / 100k up, a dynamic ip and shitty ping. WTF. The Canadian dollar is worth less, so it stands to reason that the equipment costs more for the Canadian providers (because they take in canadian $, not us $) . . .
bah, at least my dsl provider looks like they will be in service for the next month or so....
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Glad to see AT&T couldn't get away with their usual tactics again.
With NorthPoint (former major DSL provider), a bankruptcy judge let AT&T buy NorthPoint's DSL lines for a song and let them cut off all of NorthPoint's 400,000 customers.
Sound stupid? It was.
Thank you, oh Judge Thomas Carlson of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Francisco for at least giving the bondholders, the company and the customers some options, no matter how few they might be...
Hmmm, with Excite pulling the plug on a large portion of its subscribers (AT&T), shouldn't that free up quite a bit of bandwith for the rest of the @Home customers (Insight, Comcast, Cox)?
Maybe now I can return to the days of 50ms CounterStrike ping that I had in back January. Suhweet!
Of course, that is until Excite pulls this shit again in 2 months.
One good solution for us linux-heads with home networks is to set up a caching-only DNS server. This is as simple as installing the "caching-nameserver" RPM (along with the bind RPM, of course). Then just configure all your servers to point to your caching nameserver host for DNS and you won't be at the mercy of AT&Ts nameservers any more.
...
This let me bypass the AT&T nameservers that were having problems and get back online in no time.
-----
To test it first use this:
$ nslookup
> lserver
Default server:
Address: #53
> www.yahoo.com
Server:
Address: #53
Non-authoritative answer:
www.yahoo.com canonical name = www.yahoo.akadns.net
Name: www.yahoo.akadns.net
Address: 216.115.102.77
... and so on
> exit
$
-----
As I mentioned in a posting under the old article, static IP allocations are on hold until AT&T sorts out which networks go where in their internal network configuration databases. Those of us with static IP allocations will just have to wait a few weeks. (However, I've been told by DHCP users that generally AT&T does not aggressively recycle IPs, so even DHCP-based IPs tend to be fairly stable.)
I should also add that the new AT&T DHCP equipment seems to work with linux's "pump" DHCP client, whereas the old Excite@Home equipment in my area did not.
I wish we still had the old RoadRunner service - dunno why the hell AT&T BB dropped them for Excite@Home a few months ago - I guess because the rest of the AT&T BB customers are on @home, but I would gladly pay an extra 5 bucks a month if RR had jacked our rates up as I think they did with lots of their customers, if they had given us a good, solid reliable network. When will people get it through their thick skulls - I don't WANT content from my ISP, the excite part of Excite@Home was therefore useless to me and anyone who is halfway clueful, and the @home part had the worst service ever. What a moronic move on AT&T's part.
Just saw this press release stating that Covad is offering @Home customers the opportunity to switch any @Home customer to DSL for free (free hardware & install).
Might be worth investigating...
I'm not sure it will help a lot of people, but this is what I just did to get reconnected. (Gotta feed the /. habit.) I'm in Fort Collins, CO if that's relevant to anyone. I haven't got a phone call from AT&T yet. But that may well be on account of the phone number they have listed for me is disconnected right now.
I did try sending out DHCP requests before doing this, but never got any replies. I wouldn't call this course of action exceptionally friendly behaviour. But the web sites AT&T listed in some email this past week are either unreachable or have nothing helpful.
- Listen for IP traffic coming over the modem. I did tcpdump -n -i eth0 and figured that the not-10.x.x.x router doing all the ARP requests was the neighborhood router.
- Make note of several of the IP addresses that the router continues to ask for and stop tcpdump. Also note the suspected router address.
- Set your IP address to one of the addresses from the previous step (see ifconfig(8) for help on that.) Add a default route through the router you found in the last step. route add -net default x.x.x.x )
- Hope someone follows up with a suggestion on getting DHCP working again or that you get a phone call from AT&T.
Gotchas:Good Luck!
I cliped this from ATT's broadband support page:
I Understand that AT&T Broadband Has Changed Downstream Speeds on the New Service. Why are You Limiting Downstream Bandwidth?
The new AT&T Broadband Internet network as been built to optimize our customers' high-speed Internet experience. This means that customers speed settings will be set at 1.5 MB downstream and 128kb upstream to ensure that all customers receive an optimized broadband experience. These speed settings are part of our continuous effort to provide customers with the fastest, most consistent broadband service at the lowest possible price. Our lightning-fast connection enhances Internet experiences through fast e-mail communication, quick access to research and surfing, a fantastic gaming experience, quick video clip and music downloads and a whole lot more. The AT&T Broadband Internet network also has been built for future advanced service offerings. We're examining tiered speeds as a future service enhancement in addition to other offerings.
If you are in one of those two states, you will notice that your cable modem is still synch'ed up, and that any site you try and reach will take you to this AT&T page:
http://transition-aid.attbi.com/attbi_welcome_pag
This is because you are using the OLD @home nameservers, which AT&T has replaced to resolve ALL DNS lookups to their migration help site.
The fix is as simple as it reads in the Manually Configuring Unsupported Operating Systems page
1. Fire up a dhcp client. In my case, all I needed to issue was the command:
- $ dhcpcd eth1
2. Check your DNS servers (/etc/resolv.conf) and remove any of the old @home servers. The new IPs I got were:-
204.127.198.4
3. If you have any machines inside a NAT network, you need to update their DNS server lists as well (unless your gateway is set as the DNS)63.240.76.4
4. Change your outgoing SMTP server to mail.attbi.com instead of the *.home.com host.
And that should do it! I was actually surprised how easy it was to get back online after they made the changes. I was dreading bringing out the old 56k modem again.
Lets home the remaining states get their access back soon as well...
or
So if Excite doesn't turn their network back on VERY soon, like in the next day or so, they're toast: AT&T has the cash and resources to manage their cablemodem subscribers themselves. Once Excite@home no longer has anyone hooked up to their network, their value will drop through the floor.
In short, even though the offer they were given probably wasn't very good (it was probably really bad, actually), now that they've shut down their customers they're dead. And if I were AT&T, I'd see to it that the floor was wiped with Excite@home in retaliation for screwing over my customers.
The only variable I know of here that can affect the outcome is the rate at which cablemodem subscribers bail out and go with some other service, for those that can. Since it takes at least a couple of weeks for most DSL connections to be provisioned and configured, the only immediate competition that AT&T will lose customers to is dialup, which isn't terribly comparable. So I think AT&T is pretty safe when it comes to keeping their customers for the next couple of weeks. As long as they can transition the vast majority of their customers in that amount of time, they're safe, and that means that Excite@home has managed to fsck themselves good with this idiotic move.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
This is incorrect. I've had DSL for a couple of years now at three different locations, and I've used the same local ISP every time. There has never been any push or even a suggestion from Qwest for me to use MSN.
I hate Qwest and MS as much as the next guy, but let's stick to facts.
-Legion
Mind you, since I'm on Comcast, I don't mind...
My bad.
-Legion
It's really not fair to "report" months-old news without checking for updates:
Check out:
Here
and
here.
Covad's gonna be OK. Really.
--NBVB
Obviously if they really didn't want people outside they're network to use their DNS systems they would have set it up like that.
It's probably just a joke, since their IPs are so easy to remember. There could be a lot of people who's DNS servers are down using these, maybe they just wanted to 'remind' people to use other DNS servers when they could find them, without cutting them off from the 'net.
Not everyone is a humorless bastard, you know.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
OK, I'll bite. I just drove up there.
Here are some hilarious images of this classic f**cked company.