Dear NMGLUGers et al, Some of you may remember my consternation and annoyance over that situation I had where I could no longer receive email with any Linux desktop client, most notably Thunderbird, from Comcast imap servers; where all of the known Comcast imap servers failed for me; where I eventually discovered a workaround by using the 'canonical' server, imap.ge.xfinity.com, a server that has never provided a valid security certificate. Where only the Xfinity webmail page worked properly. At the time, all of this generated a considerable amount of interest. Some of you were exceedingly generous with your suggestions, time and effort helping me to work through it all. I'm still working to incorporate all the new understandings I gained as a result. Well guess what. I think I just discovered the proximate cause of the problem: our rented Comcast router for which we had been paying for the privilege of being abused with a for truly embarrassing period of time. Chalk it up to procrastination and matrimonial politics (aka my own stupidity.) Having had the wonderful success of finally figuring out how to set up Cloudflare DNS on Kubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, and Lubuntu machines (thank you NMGLUG, especially Anthony B), I decided I wanted to act on the notion that I should probably try to set up a Pi Hole ad-blocking firewall. But I knew that I'd first have obtain a third party router in order to obtain a configurable interface. So about a month ago I finally purchased and set up our own Netgear unit and returned the Comcast rental (even though the Netgear unit is a relatively inexpensive model, it will still take about fifteen months to recover the cost via savings from ending the Comcast rip-off; thus the decision was not completely trivial.) Other than shopping and reading quite a few questionable product reviews, the whole process was entirely simple and painless. That alone should have set me to thinking. This afternoon while updating a computer that I don't usually keep in Albuquerque or use online, I noticed that when I opened Thunderbird, email downloaded instantly. Which I did not expect because I knew Thunderbird was still configured for imap.comcast.net. Hmm. What if I set my other computer back from imap.ge.xfinity.com to imap.comcast.net? Lo and behold imap.comcast.net now works just fine. I conclude that our rented Comcast modem-router with the default crippled interface had, unknown to me and against my wishes, been configured as a firewall against the use of desktop Linux mail clients. At least that appears to be the case here in Albuquerque. Any new I-told-you-sos or similar tales of woe out there? Tom in Albuquerque
I recently had to stop paying Comcast because they wouldn't let me out of a 3 year agreement for over 6 years. The contract I was under had a clause that said if I moved before the 3 year agreement was complete I had to renew the contract from day 1. Since I stopped paying them they are asking me to pay over $3,000. But to be honest I'm glad I stopped paying them. That contract was fucked up. Jared (disclaimer, I work at an ISP/CLEC now) On 3/24/19 8:57 PM, Tom Ashcraft wrote:
Dear NMGLUGers et al,
Some of you may remember my consternation and annoyance over that situation I had where I could no longer receive email with any Linux desktop client, most notably Thunderbird, from Comcast imap servers; where all of the known Comcast imap servers failed for me; where I eventually discovered a workaround by using the 'canonical' server, imap.ge.xfinity.com, a server that has never provided a valid security certificate.
Where only the Xfinity webmail page worked properly.
At the time, all of this generated a considerable amount of interest. Some of you were exceedingly generous with your suggestions, time and effort helping me to work through it all.
I'm still working to incorporate all the new understandings I gained as a result.
Well guess what. I think I just discovered the proximate cause of the problem: our rented Comcast router for which we had been paying for the privilege of being abused with a for truly embarrassing period of time.
Chalk it up to procrastination and matrimonial politics (aka my own stupidity.)
Having had the wonderful success of finally figuring out how to set up Cloudflare DNS on Kubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, and Lubuntu machines (thank you NMGLUG, especially Anthony B), I decided I wanted to act on the notion that I should probably try to set up a Pi Hole ad-blocking firewall. But I knew that I'd first have obtain a third party router in order to obtain a configurable interface.
So about a month ago I finally purchased and set up our own Netgear unit and returned the Comcast rental (even though the Netgear unit is a relatively inexpensive model, it will still take about fifteen months to recover the cost via savings from ending the Comcast rip-off; thus the decision was not completely trivial.)
Other than shopping and reading quite a few questionable product reviews, the whole process was entirely simple and painless. That alone should have set me to thinking.
This afternoon while updating a computer that I don't usually keep in Albuquerque or use online, I noticed that when I opened Thunderbird, email downloaded instantly. Which I did not expect because I knew Thunderbird was still configured for imap.comcast.net.
Hmm. What if I set my other computer back from imap.ge.xfinity.com to imap.comcast.net? Lo and behold imap.comcast.net now works just fine.
I conclude that our rented Comcast modem-router with the default crippled interface had, unknown to me and against my wishes, been configured as a firewall against the use of desktop Linux mail clients.
At least that appears to be the case here in Albuquerque.
Any new I-told-you-sos or similar tales of woe out there?
Tom in Albuquerque
_______________________________________________ nmglug mailing list nmglug@lists.nmglug.org http://lists.nmglug.org/listinfo.cgi/nmglug-nmglug.org
Thanks for fighting the big assh*les! Brian On 3/25/19 9:01 AM, Alucard wrote:
I recently had to stop paying Comcast because they wouldn't let me out of a 3 year agreement for over 6 years. The contract I was under had a clause that said if I moved before the 3 year agreement was complete I had to renew the contract from day 1. Since I stopped paying them they are asking me to pay over $3,000.
But to be honest I'm glad I stopped paying them. That contract was fucked up.
Jared (disclaimer, I work at an ISP/CLEC now)
On 3/24/19 8:57 PM, Tom Ashcraft wrote:
Dear NMGLUGers et al,
Some of you may remember my consternation and annoyance over that situation I had where I could no longer receive email with any Linux desktop client, most notably Thunderbird, from Comcast imap servers; where all of the known Comcast imap servers failed for me; where I eventually discovered a workaround by using the 'canonical' server, imap.ge.xfinity.com, a server that has never provided a valid security certificate.
Where only the Xfinity webmail page worked properly.
At the time, all of this generated a considerable amount of interest. Some of you were exceedingly generous with your suggestions, time and effort helping me to work through it all.
I'm still working to incorporate all the new understandings I gained as a result.
Well guess what. I think I just discovered the proximate cause of the problem: our rented Comcast router for which we had been paying for the privilege of being abused with a for truly embarrassing period of time.
Chalk it up to procrastination and matrimonial politics (aka my own stupidity.)
Having had the wonderful success of finally figuring out how to set up Cloudflare DNS on Kubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, and Lubuntu machines (thank you NMGLUG, especially Anthony B), I decided I wanted to act on the notion that I should probably try to set up a Pi Hole ad-blocking firewall. But I knew that I'd first have obtain a third party router in order to obtain a configurable interface.
So about a month ago I finally purchased and set up our own Netgear unit and returned the Comcast rental (even though the Netgear unit is a relatively inexpensive model, it will still take about fifteen months to recover the cost via savings from ending the Comcast rip-off; thus the decision was not completely trivial.)
Other than shopping and reading quite a few questionable product reviews, the whole process was entirely simple and painless. That alone should have set me to thinking.
This afternoon while updating a computer that I don't usually keep in Albuquerque or use online, I noticed that when I opened Thunderbird, email downloaded instantly. Which I did not expect because I knew Thunderbird was still configured for imap.comcast.net.
Hmm. What if I set my other computer back from imap.ge.xfinity.com to imap.comcast.net? Lo and behold imap.comcast.net now works just fine.
I conclude that our rented Comcast modem-router with the default crippled interface had, unknown to me and against my wishes, been configured as a firewall against the use of desktop Linux mail clients.
At least that appears to be the case here in Albuquerque.
Any new I-told-you-sos or similar tales of woe out there?
Tom in Albuquerque
_______________________________________________ nmglug mailing list nmglug@lists.nmglug.org http://lists.nmglug.org/listinfo.cgi/nmglug-nmglug.org
_______________________________________________ nmglug mailing list nmglug@lists.nmglug.org http://lists.nmglug.org/listinfo.cgi/nmglug-nmglug.org --
On Sun, 24 Mar 2019 20:57:53 -0600 Tom Ashcraft <trailerdog234@comcast.net> wrote:
Dear NMGLUGers et al,
Some of you may remember my consternation and annoyance over that situation I had where I could no longer receive email with any Linux desktop client, most notably Thunderbird, from Comcast imap servers; where all of the known Comcast imap servers failed for me; where I eventually discovered a workaround by using the 'canonical' server, imap.ge.xfinity.com, a server that has never provided a valid security certificate.
Where only the Xfinity webmail page worked properly.
At the time, all of this generated a considerable amount of interest. Some of you were exceedingly generous with your suggestions, time and effort helping me to work through it all.
I'm still working to incorporate all the new understandings I gained as a result.
Well guess what. I think I just discovered the proximate cause of the problem: our rented Comcast router for which we had been paying for the privilege of being abused with a for truly embarrassing period of time.
Chalk it up to procrastination and matrimonial politics (aka my own stupidity.)
Having had the wonderful success of finally figuring out how to set up Cloudflare DNS on Kubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, and Lubuntu machines (thank you NMGLUG, especially Anthony B), I decided I wanted to act on the notion that I should probably try to set up a Pi Hole ad-blocking firewall. But I knew that I'd first have obtain a third party router in order to obtain a configurable interface.
So about a month ago I finally purchased and set up our own Netgear unit and returned the Comcast rental (even though the Netgear unit is a relatively inexpensive model, it will still take about fifteen months to recover the cost via savings from ending the Comcast rip-off; thus the decision was not completely trivial.)
Other than shopping and reading quite a few questionable product reviews, the whole process was entirely simple and painless. That alone should have set me to thinking.
This afternoon while updating a computer that I don't usually keep in Albuquerque or use online, I noticed that when I opened Thunderbird, email downloaded instantly. Which I did not expect because I knew Thunderbird was still configured for imap.comcast.net.
Hmm. What if I set my other computer back from imap.ge.xfinity.com to imap.comcast.net? Lo and behold imap.comcast.net now works just fine.
I conclude that our rented Comcast modem-router with the default crippled interface had, unknown to me and against my wishes, been configured as a firewall against the use of desktop Linux mail clients.
At least that appears to be the case here in Albuquerque.
Any new I-told-you-sos or similar tales of woe out there?
Tom in Albuquerque
We here is ABQ had a huge update to the Comcast network which took down my home network. I own all my own equipment including the modem. Having purchased the modem and router I have gained complete control of my internal network (multiple routers and other devices). Having said that whatever they did took my internal network down and in fact it was not untill today I figured out that the patch cable from my main router to the modem was the problem. A new non-patch cable fixed the problem and I can now interface with my router. Took days to figure this out. There was new firmware pushed to my modem by Comcrap but I have no control over that. Still a mystery to what happend Peter in ABQ
Thanks for the story Peter, It raises a question or two that someone might want to comment on. But before I ask, in the interest of truth and clarity I have to acknowledge my biases and mention a couple of things that embarrass me. First is the fact I am by nature strongly predisposed to distrust the motives and pronouncements of just about any large corporate institution such as Comcast, sight unseen. Which might be to say that often my default attitude is that I'm perfectly capable of providing my own arrogance and stupidity, so I don't think I need anyone else's, thank you very much. I try hard not to be that way but it gets me into trouble more often than it should. Generally, the result is some humiliating error of miss-attribution. Recently I've had a couple of these episodes with water pipes and a sync cable that I was righteously convinced were in perfect working order. It does sometimes happen that not all after-market products are true functional equivalents. Several years ago I had lower-than-expected download speeds. I figured it was a case of false representation and deceptive advertising by Comcast, but it turned out be a bad crimp on the co-axial cable upstream of the router. One question I have is about the 'patch cable' and 'non-patch cable' you mention below. From looking into my experience with the bad sync cable, I'm given to understand that some of these actually incorporate internal electronics in addition to mere incidental differences in resistance and manufacture. Is something similar what you mean by distinguishing 'patch cable' from 'non-patch cable'? Comcast can "push" firmware to *your* router? Tom in Albuquerque On 3/26/19 10:57 AM, Peter Reed wrote:
On Sun, 24 Mar 2019 20:57:53 -0600 Tom Ashcraft <trailerdog234@comcast.net> wrote:
Dear NMGLUGers et al,
Some of you may remember my consternation and annoyance over that situation I had where I could no longer receive email with any Linux desktop client, most notably Thunderbird, from Comcast imap servers We here in ABQ had a huge update to the Comcast network which took down my home network. I own all my own equipment including the modem. Having purchased the modem and router I have gained complete control of my internal network (multiple routers and other devices). Having said that whatever they did took my internal network down and in fact it was not untill today I figured out that the patch cable from my main router to the modem was the problem. A new non-patch cable fixed the problem and I can now interface with my router. Took days to figure this out. There was new firmware pushed to my modem by Comcrap but I have no control over that. Still a mystery to what happend
Peter in ABQ _______________________________________________ nmglug mailing list nmglug@lists.nmglug.org http://lists.nmglug.org/listinfo.cgi/nmglug-nmglug.org
On Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 02:40:37PM -0600, Tom Ashcraft wrote:
Is something similar what you mean by distinguishing 'patch cable' from 'non-patch cable'?
I, too, was interested in hearing about the "non-patch" cables. It isn't a term I'm used to hearing.
Comcast can "push" firmware to *your* router?
Yes. Part of the DOCSIS specification is that the provider pushes firmware to you. You may own the cable modem, but they get to program it... (Which actually makes sense.)
On 3/26/19 6:25 PM, John Osmon wrote:
On Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 02:40:37PM -0600, Tom Ashcraft wrote:
Is something similar what you mean by distinguishing 'patch cable' from 'non-patch cable'? I, too, was interested in hearing about the "non-patch" cables. It isn't a term I'm used to hearing.
I think he meant cross-over? This could have changed on a firmware upgrade mdi/mdx can be painful but not a comcast fault.
Comcast can "push" firmware to *your* router? Yes. Part of the DOCSIS specification is that the provider pushes firmware to you. You may own the cable modem, but they get to program it... (Which actually makes sense.)
It does make sense and it is why no one should use any Comcast equipment as a router. The best setup for comcast is a dedicated modem like SB6190 or CM700 modem. These are dedicated modems and not a all in one modem+router+firewall+wireless+switch = Junk. Next, you need a good router. Anything that holds openWRT version 15 or higher is good. If it doesn't run openWRT, throw it away and get something that does!! https://openwrt.org/supported_devices
On Wed, 27 Mar 2019 18:30:46 -0600 jason schaefer <js@jasonschaefer.com> wrote:
On 3/26/19 6:25 PM, John Osmon wrote:
On Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 02:40:37PM -0600, Tom Ashcraft wrote:
Is something similar what you mean by distinguishing 'patch cable' from 'non-patch cable'? I, too, was interested in hearing about the "non-patch" cables. It isn't a term I'm used to hearing.
I think he meant cross-over? This could have changed on a firmware upgrade mdi/mdx can be painful but not a comcast fault.
No I meant patch cable not a cross-over. See (1) and (2)
Comcast can "push" firmware to *your* router? Yes. Part of the DOCSIS specification is that the provider pushes firmware to you. You may own the cable modem, but they get to program it... (Which actually makes sense.)
It does make sense and it is why no one should use any Comcast equipment as a router. The best setup for comcast is a dedicated modem like SB6190 or CM700 modem.
Yes I use a netgear cm700 modem with comcrap and a netgear r7000 router as my main router. I have several older model routers of different brands taking up the slack around the house (house is made of cinder block not concrete block so poor wifi). All run the latest DD-WRT. See(3). These are dedicated modems and not
a all in one modem+router+firewall+wireless+switch = Junk. Next, you need a good router. Anything that holds openWRT version 15 or higher is good. If it doesn't run openWRT, throw it away and get something that does!! https://openwrt.org/supported_devices
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_crossover_cable (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_cable (3) https://dd-wrt.com/
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participants (6)
-
Alucard -
Brian O'Keefe -
jason schaefer -
John Osmon -
Peter Reed -
Tom Ashcraft