[KLUG Members] note on charter cable isp connections

[Adam Williams]

>As an Earthlink/Mindspring DSL customer for about a year I never 
>found them blocking incoming connections.  I was quite happy with their
>service.

I am an Earthlink DSL customer.  They block both port 25 and 80.  Of
course the service does have to be working in the first place for this
to matter.....

>One thing I -didn't- like though was the dropping of all outgoing 
>packets to port 25 unless it was their mailserver.           
>It didn't mention this anywhere in the contract I signed up with

Yep, cute.  I don't understand how that is legal. It sucks.  My last DSL
provider (who folded) decided one night to block port 25/80 with no
notice.  Suddenly my mail didn't work.  I called and they said they can
change the terms of service anytime they want.  So what exactly is the
point of "terms of service"?  Save the trees and stop printing the
worthless document, or just print it on water, it accomplishes the same
thing.

>(beleive me... I looked when I found out what theyw ere doing) and they
>flatly refused to lift the ban on an account by account basis.
>kalamazoolinux.org/mailman/listinfo/members

I'd love for someone to start a class-action about this,  they're has
got to be a way to beat it.

I love you earth-stink raves about honoring people's privacy and then
forces you to use their mail servers.  Not a chance in hell I'm dropping
my mail in some ISPs box.

The technical solution is to port forward around the blocks,  but that
requires access to another machine that does have an unblocked
connection.

My firewall receives SMTP connections on port 8000 (unblocked) and
forwards them to my internal sendmail box's port 25.  I set my MX record
to an unused IP and bounce port 25 traffic from that box to port 8000 on
my firewall.  Clumsy and a pain, but it works.

I'm leaving earthlink,  which is the real solution.  Only they want to
whack me $150 because I didn't fulfill my "terms of service" by keeping
the service for a year.  I may cancel my credit card, and then cancel
service... they can sue me.