Charter Sucks Ass

Tuesday December 4th 2007 11:56 AM PST

Well it should come as no surprise that Charter Cable's internet service is nothing more than shitty. I've lived in my house for 2 years now, and I've been having intermittent problems with them all along. Most significantly is the throttling. I've got my phone service through vonage, and simply, I CANNOT put the phone on high quality sound. Its just too much bandwidth for Charter's taste. BUT if you note my contract you will see that the Vonage phone system falls well within specifications of my bandwidth. If i make a few calls using the phone, the port will be temporarily shut down. Yup, you heard right. My phone will simply drop connection cause it can't communicate on the port it needs to. Hmmm, but if I set the phone to lower quality (thus using less bandwidth) it doesn't send up a red flag, and the port stays open.

So the part that really pissed me off has come this last month. Over the course of 5 days my entire internet connection went up and down it seems any time it felt like it. I was without any connection for hours at a time, and at undisclosed times. After the first outage, I knew it was something else going on. I did all the normal dipshit things... reset the modem, reset the router, checked my local network. Then I noticed the completely obvious... the IP address that I've had to the last 2 years had finally changed. I guess they'd finally gotten around the flushing their DHCP tables. Now the really great part is that I'm on a entirely new block of IP's. This isn't really a quick DHCP reassignment. I was put on what looks like an entirely different network. So i'm wondering when I was going to be notified of maintenance on the system (if i was going to be notified at all).

This is really not the part that pisses me off. The part that does is that new network assignment blocks port 80. 2 Years with no problem. I can actually get access to my home server, do work, and test within my own environment, even when I'm at work (or anywhere else for that matter). But now... nothing. So it looks like I'm going to have to find another ISP. I'm not going to put up with this bullshit. Its just another example of another corporation treating its PAYING customers like children.

NOTE: and don't think that I don't know how to map http to another port. thats fuckin easy, its just the principle of it.

UPDATE with legal:

6.8 Network Security and Management: Customer agrees that Charter may block traffic to and from any source, including, without limitation, the deletion of any electronic mail, as it deems necessary to secure its network and/or eliminate spam. Charter may take other actions, in its sole discretion, to manage or protect its network or to benefit the greatest number of its subscribers, including, but not limited to, traffic prioritization and protocol filtering, and in some instances, suspend or terminate access by Customer to the network. Charter may take these actions, with or without notice, in situations where Charter believes, in its sole discretion, that Customer may harm the Charter network or disrupt the performance of the Service for other users or where Customer is transmitting or is otherwise connected with what Charter considers in its sole discretion to be spam. Customer agrees that Charter is entitled to damages if Customer is transmitting or is otherwise connected with spam. Customer agrees Charter is entitled to actual damages, however, if actual damages cannot be reasonably calculated, Customer agrees to pay Charter liquidated damages of five dollars (U.S. $5.00) for each piece of spam transmitted from or otherwise connected with Customer’s account.