jelwell

I just received this afternoon (10/20/06) the following message from Time Warner Cable (TWC):

Attention former Adelphia e-mail users:

You may have previously received an e-mail message or letter from Time Warner Cable stating that you should activate your Road Runner Account as soon as you see a message directing you to the Activation Wizard. If you have not yet taken this step, we are advising you to continue to wait for direction to complete this process.

Your Adelphia.net e-mail will continue to function normally. If you have already successfully switched over to the Roadrunner.com e-mail system you do not need to take any further action.

If you are experiencing any difficulty with your Roadrunner or Adelphia.net email account, please contact our technical support agents at the following phone numbers:

 

Local Toll Numbers

Carlsbad 760/707-1000 

Fallbrook  760/929-9185 

Desert Hot Springs 760/288-7840 

Yucca Valley  760/365-0200 

Main Numbers

San Diego  858/695-3220 

Desert Cities  760/340-2225

 

 

Our agents are awaiting your call and are fully prepared to address any questions you may have.

(End of Message)

Please note the transition from Adelphia to TWC in the above areas began last Saturday morning.  TWC is just now admitting they screwed up big time.  As I wrote before, I was able to find the stuff I needed to start my Road Runner e-mail by poking around the TWC web pages.  Even then, it was awhile before my e-mail would work, which may have been caused by overloaded servers.  My Adelphia e-mail seeming stopped working, but that problem could also have been caused by overloaded servers.

I spoke to the manager of a nearby business about the conversion problem.  She said they were without any Internet service from Saturday morning to sometime Tuesday.

Currently, my Road Runner service, including e-mail, is working OK.  However, the downloading and uploading speeds remain about 400 Kbps (as measure by testmy.net) below what they typically were before the change.  I'm sure TWC would tell me my speeds are within the acceptable range for my type of service.  Maybe the speeds will come back once TWC gets their act together.

This post may have nothing to do with TWC and their Road Runner.  However, the event I'm about to relate occurred at about the time TWC began operating the net in my area.

A couple months ago or so, I elected to use Google's web accelerator.  At first, testmy.net indicated a big jump in downloading speed.  (Yes, I know the user is supposed to turn off accerators before using testmy.net's speed test, but I did it anyway.)  The speed increase, which I know isn't real per se, continued for a week or two and then stopped.  Just after TWC started operating the net in my area, the downloading speed reported by testmy.net increased substanially with the Google accerator on.

Well folks, TMC seemed to begin operating the net in northwestern San Diego County Saturday morning Pacific time.  The first thing I noticed was a drop in downloading speed from about 4.2 Mbps to about 3.6 Mbps, as reported by testmy.net.  I contacted their interactive online support and got the usual runaround.  Clearly, TMC said, their network was working just fine.  Whatever the trouble, it was my equipment causing it, and a withchhunt began that resulted in absolutely nothing.  After several attempts, I gave up.

This morning, I attempted to set up my Road Runner e-mail account using their "wizard".  Unfortunately, Mr Wizard and his TWC friends didn't seem to know anything about me.  I eventually found my server addresses and installed them manually along with my e-mail address that TWC claimed was mine.  There was still no action after many, many attempts, but, finally, I was able to send a message and got one from Microsoft Outlook advising to elect "Log on to incoming mail server before sending mail".  So, I did that, but I'm still only able to get and send mail now and then.  Likewise, the online web mail doesn't work either.  I tried to contact online support, but I was 45 or so in line and gave up on that.  What a fiasco!!!!

Thank you for your response to my Google accelerator question.  I have read how that accelerator works and about others like it and know it doesn't actually increase line speed.  That aside, testmy.net's downloading test at one time showed a higher speed with the accerator on than when off.  My question is why is the downloading test now showing the same speed whether the accelerator is on or off?  Or another question might be, why did the test show a higher speed with the accelerator on at one time.  Still another question might be why does the testmy.net test even know about the accelerator being on?  Apparently the test must know sometihing about accelerators because the user is advised to turn his/her accerlerator off before testing.

About a month ago, I decided to give Google's web accelerator a try.  Subjectively, the downloading speed did seem faster.

Then, I decided to get scientific and ran testmy.net's downloading test with and without the accelerator on.  With the accelerator off, I got speeds around 4.2 Mbps, which is slightly better than Adelphia's advertised speed.  With the accelerator on, I got speeds as high as 10 Mbps.  Then, I stopped running tests for awhile.  Today, I ran downloading tests with the accelerator on and off.  In both cases, I got speeds around 4.2 Mbps.

At that point, I thought the accelerator was busted.  So, I reinstalled the accelerator and ran tests with it on and off again.  Again, I got speeds around 4.2 Mbps regardless of whether or not the accelerator was on or off.  What's going on?

Thanks for the URL, Wouter, but I don't see how it applies to Cox's quality in North San Diego County.

I live in North San Diego County and am planning to move about ten miles to an area serviced by Cox.  I currently have Adelphia service and have never had Cox service.  So, I'm wondering about the quality of Cox service in North County.  Any comments from Cox users about service quality in that area will be greatly appreciated.  What problems, if any, should I expect to incur moving from Adelphia to Cox?

I decided to try Adelphia

I need an inexpensive backup software that will copy a complete, bootable image of my master hard drive to a slave hard drive.  This software should be similar to Norton's Ghost product.  All suggestions gratefully accepted.

Thanks for the Norton advice.  However, I'm still searching for input from people who have used or are using Adelphia's security software.  I want to know if that software is any good and how it compares with other securtiy software.

I'd like some feedback from all those who are using Adelphia's Internet Security Freedom software.  As all good little Adelphia HSI users know, this free software supposedly provides virus protection, spyware protection, pop-up blocking, a firewall, and other stuff.

I'm currently using Norton SystemWorks and Spybot, which seem to be providing adequate virus and spyware protection.  Pop-up blocking is done by Internet Explorer.  Some kind of firewall protection is provided by SystemWorks in a way I've never taken the time to understand.

My Norton subscription is due to expire in a couple months.  So, I'm thinking about using Adelphia's Freedom software to replace Internet Explorer's pop-up blocking, Spybot, and protective elements of SystemWorks.  Is this a good idea?

Recently, when I log onto testmy.net, the following error message is printed at the top of the page:

"Notice: SSI.php was unable to load a session! This may cause problems with logout and other functions - please make sure SSI.php is included before *anything* else in all your scripts! in /home/testmyn/public_html/forum/SSI.php on line 158"

What does it all mean?  All the services of the site I normally use (i.e., speed tests, forum) seem to work normally.  All of the many other web sites I visit regularly work fine too.  I haven't knowingly changed anything on my computer recently.

I wrote a nice post, but when I tried to check its spelling, I wasn't allowed access and all I'd written was lost.  So, you'll never know what I had to say.  Bye!