[olug] Cox Issues Was: Cox sucks

[Jon Larsen]

If there already is an alternative to the residential plan (Cox at Work) with 
open ports, why would Cox spend the money (training, documentation, 
billing, fulfillment) to create another tier of service? Cox would need a 
solid business plan for any tier or service plan.

Suppose they do offer a hobbyist flag, would a hobbyist be willing to 
make their system available to audits to make sure they are not 
sending spam? Remember, the hobbyist is still using their ISP's network 
to move data.  As far as I know, they don't do audits on the business 
systems. But, I can bet that if something illegal is going on, their 
going to work with authorities to get it stopped.  This is where 
liability comes in.  Cox would need to extend their liability coverage 
over the 'hobbyists' as if they were businesses.  It only takes one sour 
grape to ruin it for everyone, in other words a business using the 
hobbyist tier to do business.  Could a ebay user consider himself a 
hobbyist and host all their ebay images on their home machine and tax the 
cox network?  They aren't operating a business, but ebay is their hobby.

The ports were closed for an important reason - security.  Blocking 
port 25 prevents zombie boxes from spewing spam or port 80 from being 
used for code red type worms.  Not every hobbyist is going to be a ace 
security expert who can lock down his/her systems.  
What if the machine of a hobbyist is compromised and is spewing spam.  
Followed shortly by the entire netblock being put on a rbl list.  The sour 
grape analogy again.

I'm not saying a petition shouldn't be created, but any ISP 
supporting a network their size would need to take into consideration 
the business aspects of an additional tier of service.

I wouldn't mind having the hobbyist flag personally, but I can see where 
Cox might consider it impractical.

Jon L.

For reference:
I found the Cox AUP on their website.
http://www.cox.com/policy/




On Tue, 17 Jul 2007, Luke -Jr wrote:

> Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:19:16 +0000
> From: Luke -Jr <luke at dashjr.org>
> Reply-To: Omaha Linux User Group <olug at olug.org>
> To: Omaha Linux User Group <olug at olug.org>
> Subject: Re: [olug] Cox sucks
> 
> On Tuesday 17 July 2007 15:24, thelarsons3 at cox.net wrote:
> > "Justifying the expense" is always the hard part.  I'd gladly pay $10/month
> > extra to Cox for "hobbiest" level service (unblocked ports and reasonable
> > upload caps) but that's about all it's worth to me.
> 
> Maybe if enough of us get together and ask for a hobbiest flag (maybe $5/mo 
> extra, if anything), they'll pay attention.
> _______________________________________________
> OLUG mailing list
> OLUG at olug.org
> http://lists.olug.org/mailman/listinfo/olug
> 

-- 
Jon H. Larsen  - relayer -at- levania -dot- org
Operations Manager, Omaha Linux Users Group - http://www.olug.org/
AnimeSunday.org - http://www.animesunday.org/
ICQ#: 10412618 - http://www.levania.org/~relayer/
GPG/PGP Pubkey - http://www.levania.org/~relayer/relayerpubkey.txt