Tilting at the Broadband Windmill
I know it's ranting... I know it's tilting at windmills, but darn it, these large ISPs that are not really doing the right thing for their customers are really yacking me off! The other day it was Comcast and their blocking ports and messing with responses to requests. It's frustrating that it seems the companies with the capital to provide large bandwidth are the same ones that are the most intent on keeping it to web and mail traffic. It's incredible.
Then today I'm trying to upload a few files from work via an AT&T DSL line to my HostMonster account and it starts to send but fails in the response. I know about this as it's happened before, and I can solve this problem by doing it while I'm at home - from Comcast. Now I don't know why AT&T's DSL is messing things up - and it honestly might not be AT&T - but it's upstream where I can't see the HostMonster boxes and they can't see me.
It's really amazing. In the old days, I'd have had a modem in my laptop and I'd dial into the ISP I needed to get to and things would just work. Today the speeds are faster - which is nicer, but the connectivity is probably a lot less. Trying to stretch their infrastructure to the limit to get the most customers on it before having to upgrade it is just the typical corporate way... and it's leading to regulation. They are going to find themselves looking down the business end of massive regulation if they don't clean up their act.