[Tfug] Was Port 25, Now GD ISPs

[Jim Secan]

At 10:22 AM 09/10/2008 -0700, you wrote:
>There is no guarantee of what Cox might do in the future, so it's just 
>idle speculation.
>
>My suggestion would be to enjoy it and hope they don't change that policy.
>
>You could always sign up for a subscription VPN service that will allow 
>you to tunnel everything past Cox's limitations...will slow down your 
>connection though...

Flame on.

Here's what gripes my grits about this.  I'm on my seventh ISP (home and
business combined) since I moved to Tucson in 1999.  The support I've
received from all, with the exception of my current business ISP
(Speakeasy), has been worse than what I had with the previous ISP in terms
of services, access to assistance, and generally the feeling that the ISP
cared as much about me as a customer as a cash cow to be milked as much as
possible before I leave in disgust.  

My last home ISP (started as The River many years ago) became so bad after
the second buyout that I still can't get through to them to terminate my
account, much less get answers to technical questions.  My last business
ISP (who will remain nameless less they sue my backside off) put a firewall
appliance on my link, which I didn't ask for, that only they could control.
 This firewall was so badly configured that a slight SMTP attack on my
server (stopped by the firewall) throttled my throughput down to near zero.
 They also dumped all the rules in my firewall at one point, leaving me
wide open to the Internet-at-Large.  I now have a new ISP and a firewall
that I control, and while I'm still getting SMTP attacks I don't even
notice them.

Yeah, we can live with all this crap, but that's exactly what it is - crap.
 For example, there are better ways to deal with spam than shutting down
port 25, but that's the easy way for Cox and they don't give a good goddam
about their customer base.  This is one reason I don't want to be tied to a
particular ISP's mail server or email account.  I know that, sooner or
later, I'm going to get fed up with their lousy service and bail.

Flame off.

Jim
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| Jim Secan           | Northwest Research Assoc, Inc |
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