[olug] Cox and Web Servers

[Brian Wiese]

On Wed, 9 Oct 2002 13:58:00 -0500
"Daniel G. Linder" <dlinder at iprev.com> wrote:

-- (please enable "word wrap" on your email client) --

|Someone wrote:
|[Regarding Cox blocking port-80 traffic and other "handy" ports. -Dan]
|> It's not terrible business practice.
|
|Mr. Bill Kempf replied:
|> Yes, it is.  They don't universally block port 80 (or the other ports),
they
|> only do so for non-business accounts.  That's unreasonably restrictive,
and
|> nothing but a ploy to milk their customers of more money.
|
|Actually, it is probably *good* business practice.  Since there is only a
finite ammount of money available in the market to support these customers
they have to determine ways to keep the most number of customers happy
while making a decent profit.  This balancing act has to take into account
everything from their Internet access, equipment, maintenance, support,
etc.  If they have a critical mass of people who will pay for the *HOME*
version of the system which does NOT permit port 80 traffic (among
others), then they have made a good business decision.
|If they can then charge a higher premium for people who want to host
e-mail and web servers from their cable modem, then they need to be
charged more.  A customer which hosts a web and an e-mail server from
their home will, on the average, require quite a bit more bandwidth than
an anverage user who just surfs the Internet from home.  In a perfect
world, they could meter the traffic and change on a sliding scale for the
bandwith in/out but trying to integrate that into a billing system would
be a nightmare...  Thus, this leads to the tiered aproach.  Anyway, can
you imagine the suprise when "Joe Sixpack" gets a $250 bill for his home
Windows system after a month of running a Nimda/CodeRed trojan!  The
billing lines would be jammed with customers demanding a refund, even
though their computers *were* using up all that bandwidth.
-----------------------------

See, different problems here.  Give me my bandwidth, let me decide how to
use it.  (Cox) Provide some bandwidth shaping as a service if possible or
I could do it myself.  (Cox) Provide some kind of monitor so I can see how
much bandwith I am using, and I can figure out some problems... like a
"check oil" light perhaps?  That blinky light on the modem might not be
accurate enough.  

I should be able to run a small personal or whatever website on my own
bandwidth and Internet connection I am paying for.  It's like we're living
in AOLhell, we don't have access to the "Internet" we have access to
"view" the WWW and some other service, but mostly, our nuts are cut off
and we have no voice to "openly participate in the Internet community".
(please excuse the figure of speech) =)

They are playing their monopoly game, and we are the losers.

------------------------------
|
|Someone wrote:
|> It's smart security, in the face of Nimda and Code Red.
|
|Mr. Bill Kempf replied:
|> That's a security issue for the user, and their responsibility if they
|> choose to run such servers.  That's not relevant to Cox.
|
|I would disagree here.  It is EXTREMELY relevant to Cox.  Sure, there are
security concerns for the customer ("Did someone just download my Quicken
data files and get my account numbers?"), but Cox is the ultimate entity
who gets the complaints when all of my neighbors are trying to
cross-infect with every known virus/trojan.  *I* complain to Cox when my
connection slows to a crawl.  A good company will go to great lengths to
keep tech-support calls to a minimum.
-----------------------

Don't attack the messenger.  Get to the root of the problem.
Fix insecurities, put up your own firewall to block attacks.

-----------------------
|
|Since those of us who would *want* to setup web server at home are in the
minority, they can have the best of both worlds:  I can either be happy
with my relatively inexpensive high-speed HOME-USER ORIENTED Internet
connection.
| -or-
|I can purchase a BUSINESS ORIENTED connection and help Cox pay for the
bandwidth my server will be using above and beyond their normal surfing
traffic.
-----------------------

Yeah, why should we PAY more to do nothing more than host our own small
traffic website on OUR bandwidth... while others hog the bandwidth for
p0rn, games, warez, viruses, etc... ?  So, "we" should pay more??

-----------------------
|
|Dan
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  Brian Wiese | bwiese at cotse.com | aim: unolinuxguru
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