[olug] Cox sucks

[Benjamin Watson]

Personally, I'm following the Verizon FIOS stories a bit and can't
wait until they make the move to Omaha for the simple fact that it'll
bring in more competition.  Even if the service isn't that great
(although I hear it is able to blow COX out of the water), it'll force
COX to rethink their billing plans and offer more services/quality for
the buck.

I mean, let's face it, you've got a handful of options: COX cable,
Qwest DSL, dial up, satellite.  OK, now that I'm done laughing at the
3 former options, you've really only got COX when it comes to anything
with decent up/down speed no matter your distance from some
distribution node (central office in phone speak).


BTW, for bandwidth testing, try www.speakeasy.net.  Look at the
lower-right of the page and click the Speed Test link.  They've got
about 8 different servers located coast-to-coast across the country.
I'm fairly certain you'll have to jump off the COX network to access
the servers for the tests.


On a final note, part of my thesis project is dealing with wireless
mesh networks.  Some articles/blogs 'round the 'net give a lot of
readers a bad taste when it comes to city-wide wireless Internet
access.  However, I think it is a novel concept which is gaining more
popularity.  I think Salt Lake City and a few other markets have
sponsored free wireless Internet access throughout their cities with
decent results and user satisfaction (I mean, its free, right).  My
research and testing shows that it is possible to stand up a wireless
Internet network blanketing a fair part of Omaha, but the problem is
access to an Internet backbone.  Grass routes efforts in other cities
are possible, where "regular people" stand up their own nodes and
share their bandwidth.  But in COX-town, I'd bet that wouldn't jive
with their ToS.  I wonder if Level3 wouldn't mind lighting up some of
the dark fiber they've got laying around all over for such an effort.

Ben

On 7/16/07, Kenny Kant <kenny.kant at running-config.com> wrote:
> I think I hear about this issue from every "techy" person I know :)  and
> it is great to hear how others are going about getting service to match
> their needs.  For me, instead of upgrading to the High End Cox (lol) I
> simply host all of my email ..etc with bluehost.com I pay less than 100
> per year and get insane limits on bandwidth and storage space.  I also
> get shell access to the server, they do have a cap though for the number
> of email accounts you can have 3000 ??!? For me and my family needs this
> is more than enough.  For simple email and web needs what does one need
> past this?  To me having a dedicated server, in a REAL server room, with
> real up time monitoring, backups, and power out weighs the coolness
> factor of having an ubuntu box in my basement running Postfix and
> Horde :p
>
> As for Cox sucking, they kick ass in my book.  Coming from Lincoln where
> we only had RR (which did allow port 25 and 80 on residential BTW not
> sure now) Cox is MUCH MUCH faster and more reliable.
>
> What other options are there in Omaha?  Qwest I know of for sure what
> about other DSL options?  Anyone here use Internet Nebraska?  If so do
> you use their DSL or Cable?  Last time I checked this was capped.  If a
> Nebraska based ISP, like Internet Neb would provide decent service I
> would switch in a heart beat.
>
>
> Kenny
>
>
>
> On Mon, 2007-07-16 at 19:42 +0000, Luke -Jr wrote:
> > Ok, so Cox is clearly blocking ports 25 and 80, despite that 3 of every 5
> > representatives say nothing is blocked and there are no terms of service...
> > So it looks like I have 2 choices:
> > 1. pay for a MX and HTTP reverse-proxy
> > 2. pay Cox for business-class service
> >
> > Either way, I need to justify the expense. Anyone looking for hosting
> > services? ;)
> >
> > I can't guarantee uptime, since I don't have a big datacenter with dual WAN
> > and stuff, but I can provide static IPs if necessary and such.
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