On Thursday 19 June 2003 5:34 pm, Marcia wrote:
Dear All,
I just received this info from cox who is my cable internet provider:
Effective July 14, 2003, Cox Communications will begin filtering inbound traffic on ports 25 and 80 via cable modem connections.[...] This change only affects customers running an Email or Web Server, which is a very small percentage of customers.<
I am not sure what this really means and if this is something to be pleased about or concerned about. Any ideas?
"what it means" is summarized by their last statement above -- it only affects people who have taken on the responsibility of actively maintaining a web or e-mail SERVER from their home. [and in some truly rare occurances, it might affect the occaisional connection you make to the outside world, but that would only occur twice in 65,530-ish connections or so...] Check your TOS carefully, especially if you've had the service "for some time". In my case, I've had DSL service since the days when static IP's were the norm. Because of this, I'm legally entitled (via the TOS) to run my own server [that's the one in my .sig line] and I'm not limited by artificial "monthly byte-count/transfer" caps. YOU SHOULD CHECK THIS even if you do not currently run a server -- you may find a day when you want to do so, and it is always nice to know you have the right/ability to do such; however if you don't check now, you may lose this ability without ever knowing you had it As a forinstance: my ISP has bought into the Yahoo! family and everyone is being encouraged to "upgrade"; it turns out that under the prior TOS, users are entitled to a meager 3mb of web space hosted by the ISP. The kicker is that if you "upgrade" your account without ever activating the webspace you had prior to becoming a Yahoo!, you don't get ANY web space once you've migrated [or worse, any webspace you get is a "freebie" Geocities account...] OTOH, if you so much as upload a single file to your designated "hosting" area prior to the "upgrade", you get to keep that 3mb of space... Now, if you do actually run a web or e-mail server, I'd recommend contacting Cox to see if they can make an explicit exception to the filtering rule. If not, you should consider haggling for a lower rate [after all, you are losing some aspect of "service" that you are currently paying for -- heck, you should do this even if you DON'T run a server ;) ] -- Yet another Blog: http://osnut.homelinux.net