Earthlink to Shut Down Home Networkers!!!!!!?

drewpropsdrewprops
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
A friend of mine just forwarded the following email to me. This is VERY disturbing if it means that my home network is going to be made invalid without an additional $10/month. Can anyone else tell me what this means, and how (technically) they do this?





Dear EarthLink DSL Subscriber,



We are making changes to our network, beginning

June 24, 2003, after which you will no longer be able

to connect multiple computers to the Internet with a

single DSL connection, as you may have done in the past.



We apologize for any inconvenience this network

change may cause you.



The Terms and Conditions of your EarthLink DSL

service only allow for one computer to use your

EarthLink DSL connection at a time.



If you would like to use your DSL connection on multiple

computers at the same time, please check out

EarthLink Home Networking, which will allow all the

computers in your home access to the Internet at the

same time for one low price of $9.95 per month on top

of your regular DSL monthly fees:



http://www.earthlink.net/home/broadband/homenetwork/



If you have any questions about this policy, or about home

networking in general, please don't hesitate to let us

know. You'll find help in a hurry at the EarthLink Support

Center:



http://support.earthlink.net



Click on "Contact Us By Live Chat" to trade helpful, real-

time messages with a friendly Live Chat representative.

Or to send us an email, click on "Contact Us By Email."



Your business is important to us, and we work hard to

give you the best possible service.



Thank you for choosing EarthLink.



Sincerely,



The EarthLink High Speed Internet Service Team



************************************************** ***

This is an Administrative Message from EarthLink.

It is not spam. From time to time, EarthLink will

send you such messages in order to communicate

important information about your subscription.

EarthLink does not provide subscriber email

addresses or other personal information to third

parties without your permission. The complete

EarthLink privacy policy is available online:

http://www.earthlink.net/about/policies/privacy.html

************************************************** ***
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 59
    ti fighterti fighter Posts: 863member
    well technically here in New York with TW Cable RoadRunner you are supposed to pay an extra 5 bucks a month for each extra computer hooked up to your modem. So if you had two computers you would just hook a reg hub up to the modem and TW would sent two ip addresses, one for each computer. I of course don't do this and use a router. I think this is just a scare tactic to try and trick you into paying more money, i dont see how they could make you do it. The router is acting as 1 computer so thats what they see. But i am not an expert.
  • Reply 2 of 59
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    that or buy a NAT box. (if that wasn't the suggestion above)



    absolutely no way they can tell how many machines are behind it.
  • Reply 3 of 59
    ti fighterti fighter Posts: 863member
    yea thats what i was refering to, when i said router i ment a Cable/DSL router or also called a Network Address Translation box (NAT box).



    I had to google NAT
  • Reply 4 of 59
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    coming from someonee who has had to deal with a national f*ckwit company for its ISP (bell sympatico canada, i am looking in YOUR direction), i can say that this is 100% scare tactic. those hose yankers told everyone repeatedly that their service was meant for one computer only, and to never ever split it, and that such a thing was "unsupported" and shouldn't be done, or you'll burn in hell or something.



    then a couple years later, they turn around and sign a big deal with a routing company (maybe d-link? i only paid enough attention to get really ticked off) to sell routers to anyone and acting like this was a new service or something that the old service had previously been incapable of. basically preying on the ignorance of their consumers in the hopes that there'd be enough of them to shell out some cash for these specific routers.



    and then when they started CHARGING for extra monthly bandwidth (when their initial ads all said "sign up with us, and never watch the clock again when you're online!"), i wanted to sue their ass for false advertising. but, of course, there's probably some document at their home office that has my signature and reads something to the effect of "and i promise that should bell up and die, ro decide to replace my internet access with weekly printouts, tin cans and string, i will gladly roll over and accept this travesty, and fork over more money because i need the internet access."



    i swear, if my wife didn't need access to our sympatico email for replies to her job applications, i would have switched to rogers cable access in a second. grrrrrrr.....



    *rok hulking up* rrrrrrrrrooooooaaaAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!!!!!!
  • Reply 5 of 59
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    I got a letter from my cable modem company saying the same thing. A month later, they signed a deal with Linksys and promote their "Home Networking kit" that does the same thing as the networks they tried to shut down. I never gave up my asante network in the first place and it still works.
  • Reply 6 of 59
    piwozniakpiwozniak Posts: 815member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by rok

    coming from someonee who has had to deal with a national f*ckwit company for its ISP (bell sympatico canada, i am looking in YOUR direction), i can say that this is 100% scare tactic. those hose yankers told everyone repeatedly that their service was meant for one computer only, and to never ever split it, and that such a thing was "unsupported" and shouldn't be done, or you'll burn in hell or something.



    then a couple years later, they turn around and sign a big deal with a routing company (maybe d-link? i only paid enough attention to get really ticked off) to sell routers to anyone and acting like this was a new service or something that the old service had previously been incapable of. basically preying on the ignorance of their consumers in the hopes that there'd be enough of them to shell out some cash for these specific routers.



    and then when they started CHARGING for extra monthly bandwidth (when their initial ads all said "sign up with us, and never watch the clock again when you're online!"), i wanted to sue their ass for false advertising. but, of course, there's probably some document at their home office that has my signature and reads something to the effect of "and i promise that should bell up and die, ro decide to replace my internet access with weekly printouts, tin cans and string, i will gladly roll over and accept this travesty, and fork over more money because i need the internet access."



    i swear, if my wife didn't need access to our sympatico email for replies to her job applications, i would have switched to rogers cable access in a second. grrrrrrr.....



    *rok hulking up* rrrrrrrrrooooooaaaAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!!!!!!



    Whatever u do, don't switch to Rogers, these guys are worse.



    I went through Look (what a nightmare), rogers and now i'm on sympatico.
  • Reply 7 of 59
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    Hmm... sounds like there are no good ISPs (or phone companies, or cable companies). I mean, I've never heard even one person say one good thing about their provider! I have Covad which isn't really bad but yeesh... no wonder these companies have to change their names every three years, that way people think it's a "new" company and they lose their grudge.
  • Reply 8 of 59
    ti fighterti fighter Posts: 863member
    All in all i would say Time Warner Cable has been very good to me over the past 4-5 years Internet - superfast, reliable, standard price. Digital cable-best implementation i've seen and great price for what you get compaired to other providers.



    ..i feel dirty now..
  • Reply 9 of 59
    cubedudecubedude Posts: 1,556member
    PacBell isn't bad, but a few months ago when they partnered with Yahoo, they changed all the mail servers. I was(well, not me, the rest of my family) without email for a week!
  • Reply 10 of 59
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    OK, one good word. Here we go:

    I bought my cable modem from AT&T/@home and that was AWESOME! Fast (Unlimited download speed, 128K upload) for $30 a month (+modem rental) This was the internet I dreamed about, a rock-solid connection even faster that my school! Ahh, those were the days.



    Now the catch. @home went bankrupt, kicked the bucket, went belly up, became an EX-ISP... (Sorry, I've been watching Monty Python) and AT&T took over. AT&T said they needed to raise prices because that is what killed @home, and did likewise. ($44 a month) They also removed my static IP address (without informing me) and put me on a network with a DHCP server. I had connection problems for 2 weekends that year. This is just about when the competition from DSL kicked in. PacBell (now bought out by SBC, who has a contract with Yahoo) launched an ad campaign about how cable modems slow down during peak hours. (and in fact they did slow, but not down to DSL speeds) The only way for cable companies to fix this is by capping everyone's download speeds to 2Mbps effectively removing the "webhog lag". Well, a year later AT&T didn't see such a big profit they were expecting and low-&-behold, Comcast was born last December. After settling in for a few months, they pushed their weight by increasing the price to $66 a month. And to justify that, they increased the upload speed from 128K to 256K. Oooooo Not only that, but I get disconnected almost every day. DSL is also not much cheaper anymore.



    The moral of the story: The higher the rate, the more expensive the crap. Give me Unlimited download-128K upload and a static IP with a stable connection for $30 any day and I will be a happy camper.



    I was a happy camper
  • Reply 11 of 59
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Luca Rescigno

    Hmm... sounds like there are no good ISPs (or phone companies, or cable companies). I mean, I've never heard even one person say one good thing about their provider!



    actually, luca, my opinion is that you're seeing the fallout of all these corporations merging into telecommunications giants, where all of the executives who determine rates and feature and such are so far removed from the technologies they are passing regulations on that all they care about is absolute top dollar. hell, that's why they merged in the first place, right? to earn more? to drive their stock prices up?



    so you get the constant one-upmanship of the ceo formerly head of television broadcasts and cable access going "hey, why is this family of five sharing one ISP bill from use each month?!? we should be getting five times that much! how can we stop this??? what do you mean we can't??? you mean people are spliiting the signal, like illegal cable?!? what do you mean 'it's not like that'?!? it's exactly like that! send out an email to everyone -- i don't care if everyone's doing it. they'll all do it if this gets out! -- saying that we will come to your door and snap you with wet towels until you comply!"



    and then another company sees this policy, and says "hey, that's a good idea! if anyone complains, we can say it's what everyone else is doing, and it's only right to pay for every person using the internet in your household."



    so all in all, all ISPs don't suck, but a HELL OF A LOT OF THEIR EXECUTIVES DO.
  • Reply 12 of 59
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    I had to sign a contract saying I would have only one computer hooked up to my cable modem and would not use it in a home network.



    Woops, I mean...

    <whistling softly and creeping out the door, closing it behind me.>
  • Reply 13 of 59
    kraig911kraig911 Posts: 912member
    The best service I've ever had was grande, in corpus christi, it was 100$ a month, for cable, telephone, and cable internet. Great customer service, they made it easy to pay your bill no wierd fee's or anything just said on every bill 99.99 8$ tax. thats it.
  • Reply 14 of 59
    andersanders Posts: 6,523member
    I´m happy with my ISP.



    2-6 mbit free for $8/month.
  • Reply 15 of 59
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
    so if i have everything going through my Airport Base Station they can't see a damn thing, right?
  • Reply 16 of 59
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Anders

    I´m happy with my ISP.



    2-6 mbit free for $8/month.



    You are either in some obscure place in the middle of nowhere or pulling my leg. What ISP? and Where?
  • Reply 17 of 59
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Paul

    so if i have everything going through my Airport Base Station they can't see a damn thing, right?



    Right
  • Reply 18 of 59
    dibdib Posts: 7member
    Indeed, any company that expects to be paid for its product or service is bad.
  • Reply 19 of 59
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by DIB

    Indeed, any company that expects to be paid for its product or service is bad.



    don't be a moron.



    they sell a line with a set amount of bandwidth. the contract states that i can use said bandwidth. what i intend to do with that is my business. if i want to have a machine that only checks e-mail, it will hardly use any bandwidth. if i like to make movies of my dog playing in the field and then send a copy to 100 relatives, that's also my business.



    fact is i'm paying for pipe. if i have 5 machines all on one pipe, i'm still not using any more than what i've paid for.
  • Reply 20 of 59
    ti fighterti fighter Posts: 863member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by DIB

    Indeed, any company that expects to be paid for its product or service is bad.



    well, no, but anyone that over charges and especially tricks their customers that dont know any better is bad.
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