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The Internet

ATT Broadband Forfeits Mediaone Domain 169

Posted by timothy from the the-fan-is-hit-and-spinning dept.
Kancer was among the many readers to write with news (as carried by the Boston Globe) that "'beginning next month through March 15, current subscribers with (username)@mediaone.net addresses will be required to change them over to an address ending in attbi.com.' Also 'After March 15, any mail sent to a mediaone.net address will be rejected.' What a pain, looks like they are taking down pop mail and replacing it with web-based e-mail as well."
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ATT Broadband Forfeits Mediaone Domain More

ATT Broadband Forfeits Mediaone Domain

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  • Never used the mail anyway (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Woodrow ( 21174 ) <cwoodruff@al[ ]l.net ['lte' in gap]> on Saturday January 19, 2002 @11:52AM (#2868284) Homepage
    Enough said. I guess next it will have to be switched to comcast when the purchase goes through. Own your own domain so you don't get screwed!!

    Enough said

    Chris Woodruff

  • @home (Score:3, Funny)

    by FigBugDeux ( 257259 ) on Saturday January 19, 2002 @11:53AM (#2868286) Homepage
    i lost my @home.com address and had to switch to @shaw.ca

    i_am_not@home.com is just more funny that i_am_not@haw.ca

    • Re:@home (Score:2, Funny)

      by FigBugDeux ( 257259 )
      oh man, i goofed up, i can't type. it sould be:

      "...more funny than i_am_not@shaw.ca"

      oh well...
    • why aren't any of the replies to my comment even related at all? i don't get it...
  • Well, a temporary solution to *@mediaone.net subscribers.

    1st.
  • No POP Email,
    This used to be the whole reason to get an ISP because there were no free POP servers. Great.
    I dont want to be looking at web-based email all day.

  • attbroadband.com as well? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rackemup ( 160230 ) on Saturday January 19, 2002 @11:55AM (#2868298) Homepage
    anyone with @mediaone.com will have to get a new email address... AND anyone with @attbroadband.com will have to get a new address as well.

    What does attbroadband.com have to do with mediaone? Probably nothing, they just said to themselves "well we're going to piss off 100000 subscribers by making them change their email addresses, what's a few thousand more? Then they'll all look the same!"

    Cuz we all know how much marketing people like to make everything look pretty =)

    • Re:attbroadband.com as well? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      AT&T bought out Mediaone. Mediaone bought out my cable service, Cablevision. Big fish eat little fish before they can be properly digested

    • anyone with @mediaone.com will have to get a new email address... AND anyone with @attbroadband.com will have to get a new address as well.

      The sad thing is, they just went and deleted all the mediaone.* newsgroups and created a new attbroadband.* hierarchy to replace them. No doubt they'll want to move them to attbi.* now.
      • The sad thing is, they just went and deleted all the mediaone.* newsgroups and created a new attbroadband.* hierarchy to replace them. No doubt they'll want to move them to attbi.* now.

        According to what I've read and what I'm experiencing, there IS no newsgroup server anymore to house the newsgroups.

        Problem solved.

  • POP3 Will Be Available (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 19, 2002 @11:56AM (#2868305)
    There'll be POP3, it's just there will now *also* be webmail.
  • I lost the main email address I've been using since 1995 to a seriously crappy web based system about six months ago. If I ever find the moron who invented that shit...

  • current atbi mail sux (Score:4, Funny)

    by jpellino ( 202698 ) on Saturday January 19, 2002 @11:58AM (#2868313)
    they took away the abilty to use a standard client when not hooked to your actual cable modem - so i can't use mail.app or entourage unless i'm at home.

    they will only let you get remote mail via an att web page, so it's no longer integrated into the client with all your other mail..

    they claim this is an improvement. in order to let you access mail remotely - which every other tin-horn isp can let you do anyway...

    1. half speed since dec 1
    2. 11% price jack
    3. dns sux
    4. dhcp pool sux
    5. toy mail

    if i'm gonna grab my ankles like this, i at least want a free pair of better looking sneakers.
    • Right now I'm pulling email through an AT&T Worldnet account. They're pretty cool, actually -- they allow remote access from anywhere, if you turn that setting on *from within their network*. You can't make changes to your account unless you're dialed into their systems. And they have dialups all over the world.

      They also ONLY do encrypted mail; you can't do regular POP3, only encrypted. (I think it's over SSL, but I'd have to go review my settings and I'm too lazy to do that now. :-) ) Personally, I think that's very cool; force the user to spend a little bit more time setting up their client, and in exchange there's no cleartest mail going to or from their systems. Admittedly, AT&T can't control what other ISPs do, and in many cases the mail will be unencrypted during transit, but at least they're doing the part that's under their control RIGHT. If enough providers did that, email would be a lot more secure.

      It seems really weird that att.net and attbi.com don't talk to each other. Sounds like att.net has it a hell of a lot more together.
    • Huh? Use mail.app with iTools email. Works great over cable modem. I moved from a Mediaone/ATT broadband account to a Cogeco (Canada) broadband account without a hitch. Plus, you get IMAP instead of POP.
    • You're telling me "3. dns sux"!!! Christ! Half the time I can't get to the servers I wanna get to. "Server Not Found" is the response I get a lot from their shit ass server. Hell, I can't even get to this article right now 'cause they're dns server doesn't know the domain. The other day I couldn't get to cia.gov. CIA.GOV!!! What a crock of shit service. Good thing I'm moving in 2 months to an area where I can get dsl... not that it'll be much better, but atleast I won't have to deal with AT&T anymore.

      -Desco-

  • they are not getting rid of POP. (Score:5, Informative)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) on Saturday January 19, 2002 @12:00PM (#2868322)
    right now you have the choice of either. There is no preference at this time.

    WebMail is for people who move around and want to check their account from non-attbi network connected computers.

    Some people also prefer WebMail to using Outlook Express (the only supported mail client -- although there are instructions on the web for other clients)
    • Supported mail clients? Dammit, its POP. See, I can do it myself:

      USER jraxis
      PASS foobar
      LIST
      RETR 1
      DELE 1
      RETR 2
      DELE 2
      QUIT

      I can do SMTP too!
      </sarcasm>
    • it dies when you're hooked to anything else, like my fallback dialup, my office t1, 802.11 anywhere.

      they must think we sit at home bug-eyed to their pipe.

      a case of 'depends' and you never have to leave the house.
      • My primary e-mail has been through AT&T Worldnet Services (AWS) for a long time now, POP3 only works if I am logged on to AWS, but you can turn on webmail to access your mail accounts from the net at large. What is not widely known and is not officially supported is that they provide POP3/SSL and SMTP/SSL that can be accessed from anywhere on the net. Details are available at the WURD site http://www.wurd.com/ [wurd.com]. I use this all the time to get my e-mail over DSL or at work... This allowed me to keep my long time e-mail address and still get the advantages of DSL. (My DSL provider's servers just plain suck.) Hopefully they'll do something like that for broadband users too... B
    • Out of curiosity, do they allow remote access to ports 25 and 110?
      If so, I suspect many technically inclined people will start running their own mail servers.

      I run an IMAP server on my home box, and it's made life a LOT easier.

      -John
      • That would be a good solution, except you can't count on your connection being up. I'm on AT&T and I've lost connectivity for days. That's plenty of time for a mailserver to stop trying to connect. Plus, they do change your IP address every once in a while. If that happens, you're screwed until you can get the MX records updated.
  • - i never used my @home address to sign up for anything;
    - only used that address to respond to official mail from them to that address;
    - and still got epic amounts of spam thru my @home account.
    - the buzz is that they had a massive absconding of email records but nothing more, they deny it absolutely.
    -any confirmation of this?

    -JP

    weak as kittens, dumb as a sack of hammers.
    • I had both PacBell and Not@home while I lived in the Silicon Valley. The company I worked for paid for one, and at $40.00 I did not mind paying for the other. I used the DSL line to run my own Web/Mail/FTP service, and just used the cable for High Speed access. It soon came to a point where the cable connection became worthless due to shared bandwidth, but I left it hooked up for 6 - 8 months just to use it sporadically. I never loaded the Not@home specific browser or utility programs (I did not even know what my email address was for Not@Home) and just used the connection.

      I went to cancel and the CSR stated I had over 1200 emails. I told her I NEVER used this account, nor did I EVER give out the address as I did NOT KNOW IT. She stated that "sometimes this happens" and I had to clear out all the email before they could cancel the account. I asked for the login and password, and she said "None have been assigned to that account" They assigned one, I logged on, and proceeded to remove a years worth of SPAM. All of it addressed to the email address. NONE of the mail was worth the time it took to delete.

      I would bet they sold the list, similar to what QWEST is doing, before I would believe someone made off with information.

    • No, but my story is the same.
      Just for a yucks I checked my email there yesterday afternoon, or was it Thursday.
      I've never used my mediaone email address and I had 50 messages waiting for me. 2 from ATT and 48 spam.
    • I wouldn't have full information, but from my own experience I can tell you that most of your contact avenues with @Home support (standard e-mail, phone, etc.) just wouldn't have that information unless it were true (and they were aware of it). It would have too serious an impact on e-mail to go unignored.

      Generally, if it's only a rumour, don't contact the company asking for information; 99% of the time it's just a rumour. We get that at work (not @Home, although I subscribe to a former @Home service) all the time: people are convinced that one cable modem is faster than another (when they don't even max out the speed on either), or that they're suddenly going to get 4 Mbps speeds, or something else that doesn't have any official backing.

      I'm not accusing, just noting something as both a user and a cable modem tech support rep.
    • Same deal with me and my @mediaone.net address.

      So now I get a new spam trap @attbi.com. *shrug*
      No one who knows anything uses their ISP's email account for anything important, anyway.

      What worries me is not what they do with their crappy mail servers, but that they might someday go the way of other ISPs and start blocking TCP to port 25.

    • I wouldn't necessarily blame that on the company. What spammers will often do is launch a dictionary attack against a mail server. This is when they send spam to every possible combination of letters and numbers that has a decent chance of being an e-mail address. Many of the e-mails will bounce, but some will get through. If your address was at all common (the username wasn't complete gibberish), that could have been what happened. Now granted, most spammers won't want to see the bounces--they'll just insert a fake return address, but the ones actively building e-mail lists might, especially if they have a mailbox big enough to receive them and some software to weed through them and delete them from their list of possible addresses. And once your address has been confirmed as good, then you'll get more and more spam. Lovely, isn't it?

      • 'pellino' is a fairly rare name. Only a few hundred in the US - so I doubt the dictionary / random spelling was thrown at a system with only 800K users... and the ones with disclosed recipient names were very specific to *my* combo, and didn't have apellino, bpellino, cpellino, etc...
        • Many spammers don't do a pure dictionary attack, they just do random combinations of letters and maybe numbers. They are even less likely to use '_'. So if you create an email address at a highly targetted site like hotmail, make sure you put an '_' in your name.

          I've never gotten spam at my AT&T email account, and I do have numerics in my username so that may have blocked the spam.

          I despise companies giving out personal information as much as anything, but false accusations do not help the situation. They make the whole thing unwinnable for the honest folks.
  • I used to have an @home.com address, but now I have an @rogers.com email address for highspeed cable. This is one smart(er) thing done by ATT though... I don't think I want *all* my high speed customers having the same extension as my employees... so I think the attbi.com extension is a smart thing by them.
  • "After March 15, any mail sent to a mediaone.net address will be rejected."
    Have they never heard of forwarding?
  • I don't understand why there is such an outcry here whenever an ISP proposes changing customers' mail clients to webmail.

    It allows the ISP to reduce their support costs for two obvious reasons I see:

    -Easier mail client to walk the "AOL crowd" through

    -Webmail is less vulnerable to viruses designed for Outlook/Outlook Express

    It also allows customers to view email from anywhere.

    If you really need POP3 access, find a friendly local ISP and pay a few bucks extra a month.
    • -I have yet to see webmail that allows me to filter mailing lists, family members, and business mail into their respective folders.

      -Webmail is slower and kludgier.

      -I can see my POP mail when I'm not online, which is a great bonus for laptop users.
      • "I have yet to see webmail that allows me to filter mailing lists, family members, and business mail into their respective folders."

        You have obviously never tried SquirrelMail [squirrelmail.org].

        Please do, you'll be pleasantly suprised.

      • -I have yet to see webmail that allows me to filter mailing lists, family members, and business mail into their respective folders.

        I can think of at least one Webmail client, the one I'm switching the ISP [stormforge.net] I own to. It's called SquirrelMail [squirrelmail.org]. To quote from the About page:

        "SquirrelMail is a standards-based webmail package written in PHP4. It includes built-in pure PHP support for the IMAP and SMTP protocols, and all pages render in pure HTML 4.0 (with no Javascript) for maximum compatibility across browsers. It has very few requirements and is very easy to configure and install. SquirrelMail has a all the functionality you would want from an email client, including strong MIME support, address books, and folder manipulation."

        Supporting plugins, you can spell check (using ispell or aspell) in two languages, filter spam, use black hole lists, etc. It's also GPL'd. It's also available in lots of languages so it isn't just US centric.

        -Webmail is slower and kludgier.

        It certainly can be slow like it was for me when I was syncing several thousand messages, but it's acceptable for hundreds of messages in multiple folders. And I like lower support requirements as a previous poster stated. Plus I think SquirrelMail is pretty elegant and it's easily brandable.

        -I can see my POP mail when I'm not online, which is a great bonus for laptop users.

        This is very true, but please remember that MediaOne/ATTBI is a residential service. I've got service from them and have for the last about 2 years. I work from home alot and have been unable to work frequently. Since I do and can't afford to not be able to work, I'm suckiing up the cost of the loop charge for a T-1 starting in a couple of weeks or as soon a Verizon can get off their ass.

      • For those not interested in setting up their own webmail system (such as those mentioned above), Yahoo! Mail does both #1 and #3.

    • ummm... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jpellino ( 202698 )
      if you can't configure via a wizard or mac assistant, you probably can't operate a mouse either.

      pop will still work when you're on the cable modem itself - what we want is pop anywhere - so i can stop having to throw a switch every time i want to check all my mail on all my addresses - i have 6 to check between personal and admin respoonsibilities,

      i'd like to give out my @home as it's the easiest to give by voice, but now i can't integrate it into a mail client unless i'm playing couch potato.

      and for what good reason? certainly none on the customer end - have both - like every mom and pop isp.
    • Because they are shortchanging the inexperienced users. Web based mail has a slower and generally crappier UI, it is less featureful and powerful, users can't archive their mail in any sensible way and last but not least they miss out on learning how to operate a mailclient.

    • Re:webmail outcry (Score:4, Informative)

      by Genom ( 3868 ) on Saturday January 19, 2002 @12:35PM (#2868461)
      Easier mail client to walk the "AOL crowd" through

      As long as the mail client is standardized (ie: "We support this mail client, if you want to use another one, that's fine, we'll give you the servernames, but we won't help you with settings, etc...") then it's just as easy to walk someone through it. Heck, most tech support places just use a script they read from anyway - half the time the "tech" is as clueless as the user, at least in "front-line" tech support, where these kinds of queries get handled.

      Webmail is less vulnerable to viruses designed for Outlook/Outlook Express

      If it's being brosed by IE, it's insecure. Until MS decides to put some sane defaults in IE as to what kinds of scripts it will execute "out-of-the-box", and what kinds of system information and file access those scripts will have, it will be possible to exploit a user's system through any webpage.

      Since 90% of their users will be coming in through IE, "added security" is most definitely NOT what they're getting. The Windows Addressbook is accessible through IE's scripting engine. Unless they have people ditch their addressbooks (good luck - I tried to get my parents to ditch theirs a while ago, in favor of a local webpage, in part to save them from being a node for addressbook worms, and they would not give it up. They were that attached to it.) it's not going to help.

      What it will do is add a layer of indirection. IE can't be told to respond to a mailto: link by opening up a webmail client - so all those users are going to have to be explained to why clicking on an email link no longer allows them to email the address pointed to.
      • IE can't be told to respond to a mailto: link by opening up a webmail client - so all those users are going to have to be explained to why clicking on an email link no longer allows them to email the address pointed to.

        Err, last I checked, my Yahoo! Mail can do it, I downloaded the addon and it runs fine.

        --joshua
  • Do not use your ISP-provided e-mail address. Do not use your ISP-provided e-mail address. Do not use your ISP-provided e-mail address. You will loose it, be it because your ISP screws you like in this article, or because you move to a new home and change cable or DSL operator.

    Even a HoTMaiL account is better, or preferably some other for-a-fee services. The best and most expensive is to register your own domain name and point it to some hosting service.

    • Many professional associations offer mail forwarding services to their members. This lets you give out an email address (jre@ieee.org) that is independent of whatever ISP (769438@conglomo.net) you happen to be using.
    • There's a bit of a trend to get POP email accounts free with thing anyway now. You can get email accounts at sourceforce, openoffice, mandrake, and the like, when you use their products.

      I use yahoo (POP access) to help me write a spam-filtering program, and my own domain as a real email address. It's good to be able to give a different "suspect_spammers_website@mydomain.co.uk" email for each form you have to fill in, cos it makes it easier to track who's selling their email lists ;-)
    • I registered a domain and set it up to forward emails. Change of ISP address? Just change the forwarding.
  • I don't see any reference in the announcement that specifically and explicitly foretells the demise of POP3 account. Just because they introduce web-based email doesn't necessarily mean that they will get rid of POP3. Several years ago another ISP (I want to say Earthlink) had concurrent email access, through POP3 and the web. Maybe that's what they are doing now???
    • > Several years ago another ISP (I want to say
      > Earthlink) had concurrent email access, through
      > POP3 and the web.

      Yes, this is what Earthlink does (I'm a current Earthlink DSL customer). While I don't really use that account all that much, from what I've seen of the web client, it's not that bad.
  • I don't have anything of actual value to add to this discussion, except to ask...

    Are you bi- curious?

    Seriously, who came up with the domain name "attbi.com"? It might be vaguely easier to type, but sheesh.

  • @home @attbi (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ekephart ( 256467 )
    This might be a little off topic, but I noticed, when ATT@Home turned into @attbi, both a speed up in service and a drop off in spam/Nimda hits. Anyone who has web logs knows that the average residential user with the pirated win2k server ("Der, I got this here copy of server and I'm gonna run it cuz I done wanna gonna be 31337") probably still has Nimda. Sigh. For about 4 days after the switch I take it these people were on the phone trying to get their machines online again. Some words of advice for you MediaOne customers: Relish those few days. Call in sick to work. Eat plenty of food the few days before so you don't even have to get up during said time.

    Oh BTW here [12.237.137.0] is evidence of Nimda living on. Depending on the day you see that log you may even see some CodeRed boxes out there.

    • Oh BTW here [12.237.137.0] is evidence of Nimda living on. Depending on the day you see that log you may even see some CodeRed boxes out there.

      Gawd that looks just like the logs on my web servers currently!

  • Cut AT&T some slack. I am sure more of us are aware of the complexities of adding mx records to DNS and ensuring said changes are propogated out to each and every DNS server out there.

    • Cut AT&T some slack. I am sure more of us are aware of the complexities of adding mx records to DNS and ensuring said changes are propogated out to each and every DNS server out there.

      Huh? MX what? What's a POP server? Why doesn't everybody just use Webmail? This Internet thing scares me...

      Actually, Webmail is cheaper for tech support, because they don't have to walk everyone through the settings for their mail clients. I don't mind walking somebody through configuring a mail client when they're reasonably competent, but for newbies it can be tedious.

  • Should ISPs provide email forward like USPS? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Masem ( 1171 ) on Saturday January 19, 2002 @01:04PM (#2868544)
    While email addresses are relatively a dime a dozen, compared to snail mail addresses, the analogy to how to the USPS forwards mail when you move for up to a year would seem to be apt. Particularly since maintaining such forwarding would be incredibly simple (at least, the various unix sendmail variants make it easy; I'd suspect that Exchange is sufficiently simple as well). In this case, they'd only need to set up a single mail server at mediaone.com and attbroadband.com, and redirect addresses appropriately to the attbi.com addresses.

    Maybe they could also include before resending a 4-line notice that they should ask the sender to change the reciever's address (whether in a personal mailbox, or updating a server profile). Then after, say, 3 or 6 months, it would be more reasonable to discontinue those addresses.

    The only reason I think this can become more important is that as more people turn to online bill paying, they would need sufficient time to be able to point the various collectors' sites to point to the new address, and since some bills are only sent out every 2,3,4 or 6 months, this would allow for most billing cycles to occur once.

  • Something that is not at all mentioned in the article (or the /. story) is the issue of DNS, but I can't see AT&T retaining rights to the DNS records but not the use of email (the article seems to treat email as the only use for the domain name).

    I suppose this means that my spiffy old <username>.ne.mediaone.net (I have fought many times to keep it from changing to one of those ugly hXXXXXXXXX.ne.mediaone.net addresses) will get changed into some ugly attbi.com address.

    Either that or they will forgo the PTR record altogether, or screw it up so the PTR and A records don't match. DNS incompetence seems to be a sad trend with AT&T lately.

    • Re:What about DNS? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bourne ( 539955 )

      I suppose this means that my spiffy old .ne.mediaone.net (I have fought many times to keep it from changing to one of those ugly hXXXXXXXXX.ne.mediaone.net addresses) will get changed into some ugly attbi.com address.

      Since the hXXXXXXXXXXXX.ne.mediaone.net addresses were machine-constant (X == MAC address, and therefore you always had the same name) I just pointed my www and MX records at that name for the first year. Then came the big DHCP/DNS "upgrade" a couple of months ago. DNS was screwed up for a week and a half. I went to DynDNS [dyndns.org] and haven't looked back. Free to host up to 5 DNS records; $30/lifetime to host 1 domain, and more reliable than AT&T will ever be.

      • Re:What about DNS? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Corgha ( 60478 )
        Sure, DynDNS is great for some A records and CNAMEs under another domain (in fact I use them), but I'm not talking about that -- no one in his/her right mind would use his/her ISP address as something to hand out to people. Get a domain or subdomain and use that; you can migrate it easily from ISP to ISP.

        What I'm talking about is the PTR records and the hopefully-matching A record going the other way. DynDNS can't help you there, because I seriously doubt AT&T is going to delegate your little part of in-addr.arpa to DynDNS.

        Some paranoid admins won't allow connections from IPs that don't resolve into names or that resolve into names that don't resolve back into the IP. Rightfully so, I might add, as it only takes a modicum of competence (usually scripting) to ensure that reverse records are correctly set up. I don't want to suddenly lose access to those sites (as some friends on a different subnet have) because AT&T can't get their act together.

        Sadly, competence seems to be going out of style. My personal favorites that I've seen lately (they've been portscanning me -- I don't go looking for this stuff):
        12.161.192.5 => ip4.wpic.com.192.161.12.IN-ADDR.ARPA
        207.252.75.118 => kayne1
        Some folks clearly need to learn about $ORIGIN. (75.252.207.in-addr.arpa has turned into a lame server in the past few days, but used to be full of gems; the first one you can verify yourself.)
  • As a fellow mediaone soon-to-be victim (though I use my ancient-as-dirt TIAC account for most mail), I just checked on RCN, which both my neighbors have.

    http://www.rcn.com/massachusetts/

    There's a popup with a list of towns supported; while not a *huge* area, it's better than being fscked over yet again by what happens to mediaone -- service went downhill when ATT acquired them, then again with the @home nonsense; I can't imagine the Comcast will be any *better*.

    Medford and Cambridge city councils ought to get off their duffs and get RCN in to compete with the ATT megalith. Just *my* opinion.

    Toodles,
    --domsol
    • Be aware that you also have to switch your cable TV to RCN also. You cannot split the cable tv and cable modem. Not a big deal, but something to be aware of. Also I would check around to make sure that you are not signing up for something even worse (if that is indeed possible) than AT&T. Some RCN customers have told me horror stories worthy of AT&T and then some.


      Finally AT&T is not doing this because they want to. They are doing this because they have to given the legal issues of the domain name. Not nice, not pleasant, but as long as the lawyers are going to play in the domain name space we should all get used to it even if we "own" our own domain names.

  • Unanswered questions (Score:3, Insightful)

    by maggard ( 5579 ) <michael@michaelmaggard.com> on Saturday January 19, 2002 @02:08PM (#2868798) Homepage Journal
    In its typical way AT&T Broadband has left us more questions then they've given answers.

    From my posting on attbroadband.ne.techtalk.general [news]:

    1. Will we loose our Usenet?
    2. Will we loose the current dial-up roaming service?
    3. Will we loose the ability to use an email client while outside ATTBI?
    4. Will we loose our "vanity" machine addresses (something.ne.mediaone.net)?
    5. Will we loose simple connectivity and be required to use PPoE?
    6. Will we loose home networks that have been ignored or tacitly supported by M1/AT&T Broadband?
    7. Will we loose Network servers that have been at-your-own-risk, unsupported, and not to create excessive traffic, but *not* forbidden for the former M1 folks?
    8. Will we loose the ability to use Virtual Private Networking to/from our homes (vital to many folks working from home)?
    9. Will we loose the FrontPage Server Extensions that AT&T Broadband advertises as being in their web package but work only erratically and not at all for months on end (not my taste but some folks have wasted much time on these)?
    10. Will we loose the top-notch fast-response world-class knowledgeable and on-top-of-it-all current phone support folks (cycle your cable modem and reboot your PC...)?
    11. What about the discussions of Open Access and the ability to select from a pool of ISPs?
    12. Can we receive a guarantee of no more lost services and a stable rate for an extended period of time after all of this?

    • "Will we loose our "vanity" machine addresses (something.ne.mediaone.net)?"



      I used to work for MediaOne.. They ALWAYS hated giving out these vanity hostnames, not sure why. They've been trying to phase them out forever but keep getting complaints, that's why they're still available. My guess would be that they would dump them.

  • DynDNS and Sendmail here I come!

  • Change ISPs (Score:3, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday January 19, 2002 @02:21PM (#2868834) Homepage
    When your ISP changes your domain name, you may as well change ISPs. It's so much hassle changing domain names that it's worth reshopping.

    Incidentally, you can buy domain-based E-mail redirection [dnscentral.com] for about $20 per year. So you can buy your own domain (maybe in .nom) just for forwarding purposes.

    Make sure you get DNS MX record redirection, not mail forwarding, so the mail doesn't take an extra step.

    • you can buy domain-based E-mail redirection [dnscentral.com] for about $20 per year.

      Even cheaper: At Gandi.net [gandi.net], you can get your own domain name for €12/domain/yr. If you turn on Gandi's free mail and web forwarding, it redirects http://www.foobar4.org/rest/of/URL to http://you.your.isp/rest/of/URL or http://your.isp/you/rest/of/URL and forwards *@foobar4.org to you@your.isp with up to five exceptions going to other addresses.

    • Re:Change ISPs (Score:2, Informative)

      by howardjeremy ( 241291 )
      Incidentally, you can buy domain-based E-mail redirection [dnscentral.com] for about $20 per year. So you can buy your own domain (maybe in .nom) just for forwarding purposes.

      This is a good idea. But you can do it cheaper, with extremely reliable providers. You can get MX records or full forwarding for free from ZoneEdit [zoneedit.com]. And you can get a domain for just $9 from GoDaddy [godaddy.com]. And you can forward it to account which you can access using IMAP with any mail client, or using the web, by using FastMail.FM [fastmail.fm].

      This setup is that currently recommended by most of the community at http://www.emaildiscussions.com, which is the best place to find out about effective use of email.

  • AT&T's Secret DSL (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've been frustrated with AT&T Broadband ever since I signed up. They block port 80 (which wasn't spelled out in my user agreement, although the 'no servers' rule was), they use your MAC address to limit your access to a single computer, they don't offer static IPs at all.

    (Obviously, most of these things are easy to get around. They're just annoying. When I signed up, AT&T was the only broadband service available to me, since you asked. :)

    What's interesting to me is that no where on AT&T Broadband's site [attbroadband.com] do they mention that they also provide consumer DSL [att.com] service, hidden in their business site. I actually stumbled across this during another unrelated search.

    I just found it interesting that AT&T isn't promoting this at all. Apparently they want consumers only on cable modems. Any thoughts as to why, especially when they've been having so many problems with their cable network?
  • The first thing that occured to me when I saw that the mediaone.net domain would be replaced with attbi.com, is what would happen to my custom ne.mediaone.net hostname?

    Mediaone (in the Northeast at least) used to designate hostnames based on their customer's email address, ie. if your email address is slashdot5@mediaone.net, your hostname would be slashdot5.ne.mediaone.net. One of my favorite things about mediaone was that they assigned easy to remember hostnames, unlike pretty much every other ISP. At some point a few years ago they decided to change the system so that instead of email addresses, hostnames would be based on ethernet mac addresses, such as h000a05294027.ne.mediaone.net. Since I liked my email hostname, and they provided the option, I decided to keep mine. This custom hostname has remained active thus far. However, what will happen to it when the domain is changed to attbi.com? From looking at current attbi.com hostnames, they appear to be all based on ip addresses. This means not only will there not likely be custom hostnames, they will now be dynamic hostnames, instead of the static mac address/email ones. I will be disappointed when I lose my 1337 hostname on IRC :(
    • I just talked with an AT&T tech this morning via "Chat Room", and he said that it stands to reason that everything will be migrated over to the new domain name with no change. Thus far they are still allowing persistent hostnames to exist although they no longer take any more registration for it. The thinking is probably that the custom hostnames will gradually die off as attrition takes place.
  • Ever since I've had internet access I've used a forwarding service to my ISP's account which was really convenient because in the early days I switched dial-up ISP's every few months but I haven't switched from TCI/@Home/ATT since I signed up with them about 5 years ago but reading the posts on here about not using your ISP's email address, does fowarding to it count as using it? If yes what are the alternatives? Right now I'm using www.spamcop.net and while it does cut down on my spam it's a paid service which I want to avoid as I have better things to spend my meager dollars on. I notice that I get about 3-5 spam emails a day in my Spamcop account. I was also told by ATT that they may give external access to email "later", as soon as the switchover has been completed for a month or two.

  • Comcast is doing this too... the solution is... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mlg9000 ( 515199 ) on Saturday January 19, 2002 @02:49PM (#2868939)
    I am a former Mediaone customer. My area was bought out by Comcast and they are changing all our email address too. Comcast just bought ATT too... so guess what might happen to those people... Since being on Comcast they have done the following:

    1. Raised prices 20%
    2. Eliminated all our email accounts (you can call in 3 weeks to get new ones... gee thanks)
    3. Mailed us new cable modems and required us to self install them... then bring the old one back to them. (Not that this is difficult but for some people it might be... and bring the modem to US!!! BTW... the Comcast people were appropriately behind bulletproof glass when I brought the modem back)
    4. Eliminated the NNTP server completely!
    5. DNS servers switched several times and slowed to a crawl when it didn't timeout. (Because I run Linux and that is not a "client OS" it did not pickup the DNS servers from DHCP... I had to call a friend and have him run nslookup on his Win2k machine)
    6. Web performance was in the 56k range and down several hours a day for several weeks while things were being changed over to Comcast... (It's now back)

    My solution to all this since there are no other broadband providers in the area was to:

    1. Setup a DNS caching server... performance increased 10 fold.
    2. Register my own domain at dotster.com ($15 a year) and use zoneedit.com (free DNS!)
    3. Use my new dynamic domain to setup my own mail server at home... I paid Zoneedit $11 for the year for email backup in case I was down for some reason. Now I have unlimited email accounts, POP, IMAP.... anything I want!
  • This disappoints me somewhat. Although I no longer use MediaOne/ATT, I used to - up to six months ago. MediaOne actually used to be fairly decent - outages were rare, tech support was good, service was (relatively) cheap, and downloads/uploads were FAST. Unfortunately, the fateful day came when ATT bought them out. After that day, outages were weekly to bi-weekly, you spent an hour to get on the phone with tech support only to get an ingrate who didn't know a mouse from a monitor, the service cost went up, and the download/upload speeds went down. Oh, but they sent us a cute little "AT&T" sticker to put on our TV Remote.
  • Do corporations care about customers anymore? Or have they gotten this clueluess? POP is like a basic right with internet access. Webmail is a terrible trade.
  • read the article before saying shit like that
  • First off, I'm skeptical about "losing" the mediaone.net domain; it has been in use since, oh, 1997 or so, so a cybersquatting claim is dubious at best. But if ATT-B decided they wanted an *excuse* to can it, then they might have decided to "lose" it. Anybody know more?

    MediaOne was the name US West made up for the stuff it bought, mostly from Continental Cable. And Continental had already set up cable modem service as "Continental Express". But MediaOne really grew it.

    Comcast has now agreed to buy ATT-B. Theoretically, the new corporation will be "AT&T Comcast", but there will be a separate AT&T Corp. (the original one) doing telephone and its own ISP stuff. So will "AT&T Comcast" keep the AT&T or ATTBI name forever, or will they decide next year to change it to "@comcast..." or @attcomcast..."?

    Me, I'm glad that my real mail is still on a private ISP that lets me POP from anywhere. (I use a MediaOne cable modem.) My wife's email is on Yahoo, which allows both POP and webmail access. Yahoo just announced that their SMTP server will demand authentication (I can understand that, though I don't think Eudora Light can do it) but they still seem okay for POP, and the price is right. My gradeschooler is not happy that his email will be changing, especially if he loses his "name" portion. They'll honor your current @mediaone.net if there's no dupe already on attbi, but a lot of former @home users are already using that space.
  • It looks like the mediaone.net servers are also on ipsvc.net. Ex,
    pop.ne.mediaone.net = pop.ne.ipsvc.net.
    pop.ce.mediaone.net = chmls22.ne.ipsvc.net
    people.mw.mediaone.net = people.mw.ipsvc.net
  • This make way more sense to me. Then you don't have to worry about changing ISPs.
  • When my home.com email address goes away, I will be assigned a comcast.net address. My user ID will remain the same, so it will be fairly easy to guess my new email address. A spammer who knows about email address xxxx@home.com can easily translate it to xxxx@comcastonline.net, xxxx@attbi.com, and whatever domain Cox is using. Its a 3-for-one address swap, but the spammer would be likely to have at least one valid address. And given the number of @home users, it may be worth their while. My question is, is this legal? If there has been no communication with the new address, a user can easily prove the address was not obtained through an opt-in process. Can companies legitimately make this kind of change automatically to their "existing customers"? I've been looking forward to a drop-off of SPAM, but I'm concerned I won't live to see the dream com true.

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