[olug] Cox Issues Was: Cox sucks

[thelarsons3 at cox.net]

Jon Larsen <relayer at levania.org> wrote: 
> 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.

IIRC, Cox at Work amounted to something like twice the price, quarter the bandwidth, with unblocked ports and static IPs.  Not a good trade, IMO.

> 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.

We all understand Cox is a business and needs to make money.  Cox already monitors traffic - I don't see what kind of "audits" would be required beyond what they can already see.  I'm completely agreeable to monitoring and bandwidth shaping to ensure that "hobbiests" don't try to run a business on the sly.  Joe Vacationer putting some pics online for his family to see would be fine; Joe Photographer promoting his studio online would likely put him over a limit.  Likewise, Joe VanityDomain is going to be fine; Joe RedHatMirrorDomain is going to have problems.  This is reasonable.

Now, I don't know how expensive it would be to set up for this kind of monitoring and shaping.  Perhaps it _is_ too expensive for the number of hobbiest-geeks that would choose (and pay a reasonable surcharge for) this service, so that Cox would only lose money.  But I don't know that.

> 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.  

I'm no security ace myself, so I can't speak to the issue of worm propogation.

> 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 do understand the spam angle, and that's why outgoing 25 would still have to relay through Cox servers.  I don't see why inbound 25 has to be blocked, though.

> 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.

Definitely.  But we don't know if the idea's ever been considered.

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

Also:  http://www.cox.com/policy/limitations.asp

Looks like Cox already offers tiered residential services.


Tim
-- 
Tim & Alethea