[lug] @home mail failures - isp alternatives?

[Neal McBurnett]

I use AT&T's local @home service and find it useful, but I run into pretty
frequent DNS and DHCP outages.  All the DNS servers are on a single
subnet!  But those are pretty easy to work around.

Jeff Sparhawk forwards this interesting and alarming page of
statistics about email outages, though:

	http://members.home.net/mblackford/eGroup-chart.htm

I think the author is in California, and I wonder if local experience
is as bad.  All users would share a lot of the email infrastructure.

I don't use the email part of the package and would love to stop
paying for it.  Does anyone know the status of the current experiment
(pioneered in Boulder) with AT&T providing alternative ISPs for
a small selected group of users?

I've copied Ricard Varnes on this message - he is Director of
Operations for Cable Refranchising Issues with the City of Boulder:
(303) 441-3102.

Some other details are in the messages attached below.

Sigh,

Neal McBurnett <neal at bcn.boulder.co.us>  303-538-4852
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/      (with GPG/PGP keys)


----- Forwarded message from Jeff Sparhawk <jsparhawk at home.com> -----

From: "Jeff Sparhawk" <jsparhawk at home.com>
To: "Neal McBurnett" <nealmcb at avaya.com>
Subject: RE: @home
Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 15:39:01 -0700

Neal,
Thanks for the response.  I have emailed @home tech support and
customer service and have received responses but no satisfaction.  My
problem is that the mail servers are down almost 50% of the time.
People tell me they get bounces from my email constantly.  Sometimes I
get the mail and they get a bounce, sometimes I don't get the mail and
they get a bounce, sometimes the mail just vanishes.  This mail is
coming from at least 20 different sources from all over the country.

I found a web page that someone put together that discussed in detail
the problems with @home.  I can't seem to find it again.  This link is
kind of interesting regarding the problems with email @home is having.
http://members.home.net/mblackford/eGroup-chart.htm

I have thought about contacting Tom Martino and seeing if he can get
any results since individuals don't really seem to matter to AT&T.

--Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: Neal McBurnett [mailto:nealmcb at avaya.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 13:49
To: Jeff Sparhawk; Sparhawk at colorado.edu
Subject: Re: @home

I'm not sure, but seem to recall that it was the AT&T rep on the
phone who said that.  Sorry I don't have a citation.

What problems have you seen?  I see DNS as unreliable (all their
servers are on one subnet) and dhcp also as unreliable.  But
by configuring alternate DNS servers and just fixing my IP address
to what they gave me in the past it works fine.

I was never interested in their email service.  I've just started
trying the linuxfreemail.com service, which does IMAP so I can
be mobile.  It would be nice to save the money though.  I think
the speeds I get are better than I could get with DSL.

Good luck.

-Neal

On Tue, Feb 06, 2001 at 04:08:57PM -0700, Jeff Sparhawk wrote:
> Neal,
> I just read a post you made Aug 8th 2000 to the Boulder Linux Users Group.
> In your post you reference that in February a new law will kick in forcing @home to allow ISP choice.  What did you mean by this
and
> is it still true?  I am very very dissatisfied with my @home service and have been thinking about changing to DSL but if I can
> simply switch ISPs it would be much easier.
> Thanks,
> --Jeff
> Oh, and my e-mail is so unreliable I might not get your response.  Could you also reply to Sparhawk at colorado.edu
>
> --original post-
>
> * To: lug at lug.boulder.co.us
> * Subject: [lug] AT&T @Home cable Internet access in Boulder - experiences?
> * From: Neal McBurnett <nealmcb at avaya.com>
> * Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2000 20:40:28 -0600 (MDT)
> * List-Id: Boulder (Colorado) Linux Users Group -- General Mailing List <lug.lug.boulder.co.us>
> * Reply-To: lug at lug.boulder.co.us
> * Sender: lug-admin at lug.boulder.co.us
>
> Well, I got a flier from AT&T @Home, and had heard from a guy in an
> @Home truck that our neighborhood (40th and Baseline) was wired, so I
> called to sign up.  They're offering free installation, 2 months free
> service, static ip address for free, and $39.95/month after that
> (perhaps assuming you already have cable service).  Extra static ip
> addrs (up to 5) at $4.95/month.  The policy is supposed to say you
> can't run servers, but she said they don't have time to police that at
> least now.  Downlink 1.5 Mb/s uplink 128 kb/s (sigh) 7 email
> addresses, 70 MB free web space.  "we support linux but don't install
> our software on it for you".
>
> They say they'll be here on Saturday to do the install, providing
> an additional cable jack for free also.
>
> No choice of ISP now, but in February she said a new law would
> kick in and they would have to allow ISP choice and the prices
> would drop.
>
> http://www.athome.att.com/home.html
> config: http://home.excite.com
> 888-824-8418
>
> Sounds good, especially when it is no cost for 2 months, but there
> always seem to be some gotcha's and misunderstandings.  Any local
> experiences?  Things to watch out for?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Neal McBurnett <neal at bcn.boulder.co.us>  303-538-4852
> Avaya Communication / Internet2 / Bell Labs / Lucent Technologies
> http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/      (with PGP key)
>

----- End forwarded message -----