BuzzMachine

The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

Cablevision sucks!

15 comments on Cablevision sucks!

Cablevision sucks!

: But we knew that, didn’t we? The reason they suck today: Suddenly, I couldn’t send email. After wasting an hour of my time and Hosting Matters’ time, it turns out the damned cable ISP overnight switched to require all outgoing mail to go through only its SMTP server. Now correct me if I’m wrong (please) but when I go to the office tomorrow, I’ll just bet I’ll have to switch it back again; and then switch it tomorrow night, and on and on. They didn’t tell anybody; they just did it because, hey, we’re the cable company and we suck but you’re stuck. (I live too far away from a central phone company office to be able to use DSL, so I am stuck.) Cablevision sucks.

: UPDATE: It gets better. Two Cablevision managers said to me with straight face that I could upgrade to a business account. So I could move from my $40 account to one that costs $110 just because Cablevision decided to change a rule to inconvenience its customers (and, by the way, this also shows that Cablevision did not have to change this rule). That’s clearly not good, I said. “Well, it’s an option,” they said. Yes, and so is sitting on top of a flagpole in my underwear. But I think I’ll pass.

If you’re a Cablevision customer victim, the man in charge is one Wilt Hildenbrand at 516 803 2300. Call and complain. If you walk to Cablevision, demand that your complaint be escalated, as well.

15 responses to “Cablevision sucks!”

  1. Sterling Avatar
    Sterling

    They’re probably blocking outgoing requests to port 25 on any remote host. You could go around this by changing the port # on your email server, and on your client (though you might have to download a new email client that would let you do this).
    In the meantime, if you have shell access to your server you might be able to run Pine over telnet.
    Another alternative would be to install PC Anywhere or VNC on another machine on your other network and get your email that way.
    And still another alternative would be to use a Web email client that allows SMTP and POP access to your server – Yahoo! does this. That’s everything that comes to mind off the top of my head.

  2. Craig Danuloff Avatar
    Craig Danuloff

    An easier solution is to simply create another email account in outlook, using the exact same settings with the alternative SMTP address. Label it HOME OUTBOX and when you send mail from home (or work as the case may be), you can use the Account Pull Down menu (right next to Send) to choose to send your mail out via that account. (hope that makes sense). Your inbound mail will not be affected at all. I do this to send mail out via all kinds of different accounts and have used it to send some mail via my Verizon DSL and some via my Earthlink dial up – this works and isn’t too inconvenient. – Craig

  3. TC-LeatherPenguin Avatar
    TC-LeatherPenguin

    “From the folks who bring you the overpaid, underachieving, New York Rangers and Knicks …”

  4. Sterling Avatar
    Sterling

    But Craig, that won’t get him access at home to the external email, which I think is the larger problem.

  5. Hank Fenster Avatar
    Hank Fenster

    Cox Cable did this too, and while I’m not happy about it, there’s a reason. Because Windows is running on 90% of the machines out there, its flaws are continually being probed and exploited. This has resulted in many thousands of home machines being dragooned into the spammer army. These zombified PCs are being used to send out spam email in an effort to bypass anti-spam efforts that ISPs and users are taking. By forcing all outgoing email to go through their servers, your ISP can better detect that your machine has been compromised and shut it out of the net until you fix the problem. The alternative is to risk having their entire network being identified as a problem and being placed on a “blackhole” list where all email traffic from it will be ignored.
    Cox tells me that if I want to get a “business” grade account, I can go back to using any SMTP host that I want. It isn’t important enough for me to make the change (and pay the increased cost).

  6. Kim Avatar
    Kim

    Do you know where your nearest T-1 loop is? I used this company to get a quote in NJ. My client is paying $200 per month down near AC and another in Jersey City only $150 per month. http://www.t1solution.com/

  7. anne.elk Avatar
    anne.elk

    What a crybaby. If for some reason you can’t use Cablevision’s smtp router with your own From: address. Then just get Hosting Madders to route around it as buggested above. I use port 25 and 1025 on my own smtp routers. If you want to make sure they can’t block you, use port 80 or 443.
    In the meantime Cablevision is taking some appropriate action against spam.

  8. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    Anne: You’re equally pleasant about all topics, aren’t you? Do you get this grouchy about hamburgers?
    The problem is that I canNOT use my Hosting Matters SMTP; that’s precisely what’s wrong. I can use only Cablevision’s at home and then when I go elsewhere (between two offices and on the road and in Starbucks) I have to change it again.

  9. Barney Lerten Avatar
    Barney Lerten

    Typo alerts, Jeff: “Walk” to CableVision? “Swift Board” brouhaha? I think you lose folks with typos like that. Would you prefer e-mail pointing them out? Do you have time/inclination to fix them? Last time I asked, got no reply, so here I go, doing it in public. Shame on me;-)

  10. anne.elk Avatar
    anne.elk

    Hey you’re right. I apologize for not being pleasant about this.
    If I understand you correctly, is it that you would LIKE to use Hosting Matters’ SMTP server both at home and from the office and presumably from a laptop that you carry back and forth?
    If so, suggest to Hosting Matters’ that they tell their SMTP server to bind to ports 25 AND to 1025, or 25 and 80 or 25 and 443, THEIR CHOICE.
    Hosting Matters should be able to do this relatively easily. Hostmatters is running Exim on Linux. According to the docs, all they need to do is add something like 1025 to their listening ports directive in their config files. And open that up on their firewall.
    http://www.exim.org/exim-html-4.40/doc/html/spec_13.html#SECT13.5
    Hosting Matters presumably has many customers similar to yourself, that are accessing the net via a cable company blocking port 25 — it’s becoming more and more common to do so.
    Also ask Hosting Matters why they apparently have no secondary mail exchange backup for buzzmachine.com. If hosting matters’ server dies, then no one will be able to send you any email at all.
    What is the real reason you cannot use port 25 and Cablevision as your default smtp agent when you are home? I used to use pacbell, and doing so led to very late mail, but apart from that, there is usually not a great reason for not using the local ISPs smtp mailer.

  11. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    Anne:
    Thanks.
    Cablevision said SMTPS was an option. Hosting Matters said to use port 465 and enable SSL. Still not working.
    Yes, the problem is very simply that I want to be able to take the laptop anywhere and send mail without having to reset the settings in two clients covering three accounts. Pain in the rump.

  12. GCW Avatar
    GCW

    I ran into this problem this week with Verizon.
    I think there are some profile managers that can help you here. They should be able to detect your login location (home, work, Panera, etc.) and automatically change your settings on the fly, as long as you’ve set it up previously.

  13. Barry Avatar
    Barry

    Jeff –
    Netswitcher. http://netswitcher.com/
    A nifty little Windows utility that lets you store just as many network configurations as you like, and switch between them with a click (often without even rebooting.) Set up your e-mail clients once for each environment you use in, switch instantly between and among those settings whenever you need to.
    Free to try, $14 to buy. Maybe the best bang for the buck I’ve ever experienced in a piece of Windows software.

  14. anne.elk Avatar
    anne.elk

    An interesting URL to click on is:
    https://hostingmatters.com:465/
    This indicates that yes, hostingmatters does have port 465 opened for SMTPS.
    Port 465 is apparently the usual port used for SMTPS, so you need to indicate to your mail user agent that it should a) use SMTPS and perhaps b) use port 465 for this.
    If clicking on the URL above doesn’t result in your browser asking you about certificates, and finally presenting you with evidence it was trying to talk to a mailer, then perhaps cablevision has blocked port 465 as well, but that’s very unlikely.
    You can get more help if you tell folks what mail program you are using.
    (And this is what clicking on the above link provides to me:
    “220-zeus.hmdnsgroup.com ESMTP Exim 4.34 #1 Sun, 22 Aug 2004 22:13:47 -0400
    220-We do not authorize the use of this system to transport unsolicited,
    220 and/or bulk e-mail.
    500 unrecognized command
    500 unrecognized command
    500 unrecognized command
    500 Too many unrecognized commands
    ”
    )

  15. Vin Crosbie Avatar
    Vin Crosbie

    Jeff, you were lucky it only took you an hour of your time to discover it. It me four hours of testing every damn setting in my home computers and e-mail programs before I realized that Cablevision not only made such a dumb change but did it unannounced.
    However, after a little social engineering via Cablevisions ‘customer service’ phone line (yes, 15+ minute wait before anyone human answered), I discovered that the change is easy to circumvent. Simply change your e-mail program’s SMTP server settings use Cablevision’s SMTP server (mail.optonline.com) and don’t make any other changes. You can keep your previous ISP’s e-mail addresses and its POP3 or IMAP server. Just change the SMTP setting to use Cablevision’s and everything is fine. Cablevision’s SMTP doesn’t require any authentication.
    So, no need to switch to their ‘business’ account.
    The only problem is that some dumb e-mail systems out there might see that your e-mail address and sent-from address don’t match, which might trigger some equally dumb defenses against spam. But I haven’t run into that problem after changing my three or four e-mail accounts to circumvent the Cablevision change.
    AT&T made a similar but worse change last year to my girlfriend’s DSL. In that case she now can’t use anything but AT&T’s SMTP, POP3, and E-MAIL ADDRESS, despite having her own company and e-mail servers. At least Cablevision was as dumb as AT&T!
    Vin Crosbie
    Greenwich, CT