Hotmail Returns The Favor: Says No To Comcast Emailers

from the this-again? dept

A couple months ago, we reported that a technical problem from Comcast meant that Comcast users couldn’t email any Hotmail accounts. Someone commented on that story yesterday saying it was happening again. zanek writes in to let us know that this time, the problem appears to be on Microsoft’s side: “Microsoft’s MSN and Hotmail have apparently been brought to their knees by an as yet unidentified virus. As a result, Comcast reports subscribers are being blocked. Customers of Canadian ISP Cogeco are purportedly managing a bit better, with one out of five messages actually reaching their targets.”


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Comments on “Hotmail Returns The Favor: Says No To Comcast Emailers”

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16 Comments
zcat (user link) says:

Re: Re: No Subject Given

Hotmail was run on *nix for a LONG time after microsoft bought it. Eventually they managed to get the web front-end onto Windows and IIS after a few failed attempts. It’s not clear (or easy to find out) if they ever managed to migrate the back-end database.

Microsoft’s DNS is all handled by Akamai (and hosted on Linux). When windowsupdate was under threat they hid that behind Akamai’s cache system (which runs on Linux). In short, Microsoft host stuff on Windows as much as they can for show, but when it’s too important or the shit hits the fan they run to *NIX every time.

Andrew Strasser (user link) says:

Comcast pro's and cons...

6 megs for a little more than DSL. 10 times as much spyware and incredibly worthless material added to your computer(w/out not installing their wonderful back-up and maintenance programs and self installing the IP proxy servers). It balances out in the long run but only if you make them come out and make your bandwidth be right. They allow 15 db’s out of phase either way which is a huge loss of bandwidth. I made them get mine where it seasonally stayed between 0 and 2 db’s out of phase and it ran better than any champ out there. DSL now serves me well but I don’t play near as intensive games as I did then either.

praetorian says:

Re: Comcast pro's and cons...

Andrew, I don’t know what spyware or “incredibly worthless material added to your computer” you’re referring to. I’ve used Comcast for years, and I’ve yet to need one piece of software from them to enjoy 500% greater bandwidth than any DSL provider. And by the way, 15db loss is a widely-accepted standard loss budget for a majority of ISPs.

Jeremiah (user link) says:

Re: Re: Comcast pro's and cons...

Andrew is correct: Comcast field techs are instructed to install a 60+mb software package on your PC before they’ll complete your cablemodem install. The package is laden with malware ala RealPlayer, some online weather service that installs a coupon “service”, and a few more odds’n’ends I never bothered to look at before removing their software.

Oh, the catch was this: in order to initialize the modem, they have to run a program that’s part of the 60+mb download/install. Basically, you’re SOL until you install thier POS.

Devin says:

Re: Re: Re: Comcast pro's and cons...

Not True. I use comcast and they never installed anything. I used my own cable modem and all I had to do was call them and give them some information so I could connect. I got a new cable modem a little later and all I had to do was call them again.

Comcast is responsible for spam and other things and is banned from many email, irc, and other servers but at least for me they didn’t install any spam on my computer to use their service.

skeezer65134 says:

Re: Comcast pro's and cons...

I’ve also never installed any of the software they want to throw on. The one time I had an install from Time Warner, the guy said I needed the software to get full speed access. I showed him to my Linux box and he promptly left my place.

I’ve also done a handful of self-installs and all you need is a phone number and the MAC from the cable modem. You should never need software for cable modems.

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