Slashdot Mirror
Most @Home Customers Still Connected -- For Now
Mansing writes: "There may be hope after all, according to this update from the Washington Post" In short, a reprieve for many @Home customers, with negotiations ongoing between @Home and the major cable companies with which its service is offered -- watch for updates here. (AT&T broadband customers, though, will be moving to another service -- AT&T dropped out of the negotiations to keep @Home for their customers, and say that switching current customers to a new network will take about 2 weeks.)
I'm with Comcast, in Reston VA, and I did not want to go back to dial up. Comcast has been great. Always high speed, and I've never had any downtime. I downloaded RedHat 7.2 from linuxberg in < 1 hour over Thanksgiving weekend. (I'm not sure exactly how long it took, started download, got lunch, after lunch it was done). And they are fairly linux friendly. They don't "officialy" support it, but they use basic DHCP, so it's easy to connect. Just remember the "-h HOSTNAME" switch.
Best Slashdot Co
I posted this in reply to the how-to in the other thread, but seems I might be better served to post it here or many people might not see it.
FWICT, the best way to get your service re-established goes like this:
-kill your dhcp client. Wipe your leases.
-re-init your cable modem:
(Unplug it, wait 20-30 seconds and plug it in)
-Wait for it to sync up. If it doesn't, keep trying.
-Once it resyncs, run:
tcpdump -i eth0 -lf dst port 68
This should list the dhcp replies going out
on your subnet. If you don't see them,
something is still not right. Try re-initing
your cable modem again.
-Start your dhcpclient
This should get you setup. Remember, if you're like me and were on a static number and blocking dhcp traffic you'll need to alter your firewall rule(s).
"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
--James Madison
My connection with AT&T in Seattle was back up as of Sunday morning. It's not @Home anymore, though - they changed us to a new network (.attbi.com - AT&T Broadband Internet.)
After the first six hours of slow connectivity, with everyone all trying to get e-mail at once, it actually seems faster than the @Home access.
I was an Excite@Home broadband subscriber in Washington state until around 6:00 AM local time on Saturday. (I was using the service at the time it cut out..) On Sunday morning I received an automated phone message from the local cable provider, AT&T, saying they were taking steps to provide a transition to their own service as quickly as possible. Sunday afternoon I received a second call claiming that they had re-established service in my area.
The claim turned out to be semi-true. The first hurdle turned out to be DNS. The nameservers specified by their DHCP servers have been totally bogus. The first two in the list of three are unpingable and the third replies to every request with a lookup failure / unknown host. So I pointed my systems towards an open, known-good nameserver run by one of my former sysadmin colleagues. Now I've got correct nameservice but it turns out that about two out of three addresses I try are unpingable for reasons that are completely opaque to me. Example: I can ping two hosts (call them A & B) across the country, both sitting on the same subnet. Host A answers, host B is unreachable. Traceroute to host B (from my machine) travels all the way to the gateway that's the last hop before either host, but packets going one hop further to host B don't seem to make the round trip while packets to host A do. (I have, of course, verified through a third host that host B is actually up and reachable, just not reachable from my home.)
Called the provided AT&T tech-support number on Sunday afternoon hoping to find a quick fix (or at least make them aware there was a problem..) The recorded phone message said they don't provide phone support after 8 pm or on Sunday (arggh!) but would be answering calls again at 8 am Monday. Suspecting that I'd have to deal with a bottom-level tech-support script drone trained to reject any request from someone (a) running an "unsupported configuration", and/or (b) refusing to run AT&T's little "Click OK and we'll do a bunch of stuff to your computer's configuration and then we'll all be happy" Windows Configurator utility, which their message insisted I download and run to fix all my problems, I unplugged my lovable little Linksys box, connected the PC directly to the cable modem, rebooted into Windows and ran their damn configurator. It's not like I actually expected it to fix anything, but the only effects I could observe were about 90 seconds (!) of hard-drive activity, a mandatory Windows reboot, and the fact that now all MSIE browser windows say "Microsoft Internet Explorer provided by AT&T Broadband Internet" in the title bar. God only knows what other crap they dumped into my registry, but I was planning a re-install this week anyway. Still, it's not an encouraging sign when a company feels it's on solid customer-relations ground putting an advertisement in every window titlebar. (Besides, what's the freaking point? Am I supposed to buy more Internet connectivity? I'm already paying for their service, what more do they want?)
Anyway, that's a summary of my experience with the transition so far. I'll post a follow-up after things settle out if anyone expresses interest.
I posted this in the last @Home discussion, but that was after about 450 posts so it basically got lost, so here it is again.
.org and .com all seem to be taken, so its hard to say what your email address could end up being.
I actually just had a chat with a Comcast rep at a local technology show and it looks like that if your running Comcast@Home you might be in for a significantly better ride than the other providers have partnered with.
Comcast has been working on their own broadband cable network for a bit of time now, partly anticipating the demise of @Home as well as the issues rising out of the severe limitations that @Home put on commercial deals that Comcast wanted to pursue. Originally planned to launch in April 2002, the Comcast network, currently codenamed 'JumpStart', has been pushed forward to a potential launch January 1st 2002, assuming everything goes well. Due to the accelerated timetable there may be glitches in the initial rollout, but frankly intermittently buggy cable (assuming it will be fixed in the near future) is better than dialup in my opinion.
You will however lose your @Home email account as well as any stored messages or address book so back them up as soon as possible. Comcast will provide email services once their network is up and running. What the final name of the program I can't attest to, jumpstart.net
Obviously this is all from one source, though a Comcast representative, its best to avoid taking all this to heart until there is a final formal announcement as to their plans. I do know that Comcast@Home is up and running as of mid-day today. For how long... who is to say.
forma3
Well, look at their 2000 10-k (it's a PDF). I haven't read through most of it, but the financials are pretty disturbing. $1 billion in debt; negative cash flow 2 years running (-$125.9 million in 2000); $9 billion accumulated deficit; $7.4 billion net loss in 2000 ($18.73/share). Even the auditors report mentions a "substantial need for additional funding" and "substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern."
I don't want to see them shut down any more than you do, but given the financials, I don't blame the creditors one bit.
Like me, someone who lost his static IP for a dynamic one, I'd like to recommend www.dns2go.com.
.d2g.com to point to your dymamic IP, regardless of what it is. Pretty handy.
The have a client (win32, linux, & more) that basically sends a heartbeat to their servers telling them your IP address. You can then setup a user defined domain within their top level
Praying for the end of your wide-awake nightmare.
>switching current customers to a new network will take about 2 weeks
...it has already moved to its own high-speed Internet network nearly 40 percent of the 850,000 customers who lost service this weekend...
What is the source for this? AT&T has said 7 -10 days fairly consistently. Over 40% of customers are already on attbi. AT&T said they will have 600,000 subs moved over by the end of the day Monday, with the rest back up by Friday.
according to reuters:
About 330,000 subscribers in Oregon, Washington and the Dallas area have been moved to the new AT&T Broadband network, the company said in a statement. Customers in San Francisco and Illinois are scheduled to be moved during the day on Monday, and by day's end it expects to have switched 657,000 subscribers to its network.
The balance of its affected customers will be switched by Friday, it said
and here, from an AT&T press release:
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. - AT&T Broadband moved about 330,000 cable Internet customers to its new high speed Internet network as of Monday morning, Dec. 3, less than 48 hours after the At Home Corporation shut off service for more than 850,000 AT&T customers. The At Home Corporation's action followed a decision in U. S. Bankruptcy Court to cancel cable company distribution agreements with At Home.
The customers moved to the new AT&T network so far reside in Oregon, Washington, and metro Dallas. Customers in San Francisco and Illinois are scheduled to be moved today and tomorrow, bringing the total added to the new network to about 657,000.
There are lots of other details in the AT&T press release, including what will happen to customers still on the MediaOne network in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Atlanta; Jacksonville; Los Angeles; the Stockton and Fresno areas of Central California; New England; Richmond, Va.; and St. Paul, Minn.
Customers formerly served by MediaOne are remaining on a separately operated network
...
For the group of customers in the markets being served by this separately operated network, the service will be re-branded as AT&T Broadband Internet. For the majority of customers in these markets, the network, Internet service connectivity, email domain names, and data transmission speed won't be affected. The only change these customers will see is new content provided by Yahoo! To access this new content, customers can direct their browsers to http://home.attbroadband.com/.