ISP Issue

I heard this week that Insight Cable here in the Lafayette area may be offering local telephone service within the next year. They will most likely offer a package deal for the customer that gets digital cable, broadband, and voice service. Another advantage that I would have is that our cable TV line is buried underground, while the phone wires are up on poles. We lose service several times each year when a wind storm knocks branches down.

My dad uses a similar service from Cox Cable in Arizona, and he is happy with it. His phone number followed him from the RBOC. He has a converter box outside the house that converts the cable signal to an analog signal that hooks to the existing phone wire in the house. Pretty easy.

I have one issue (and I always have an issue) with using cable broadband instead of the ADSL line procured through work. I have no restrictions on how I can use my connection, including setting up web connected services. Long time readers will remember that I have setup an IMAP service that I can access over the 'Net, and that I have a PHP program that provides webmail running on a University server. I've been told that most commercial broadband providers, including Insight, filter incoming traffic to block web servers and other servers. I guess that I could try using an outside server for email (such as my domain provider), but we like having the email server in the room. Luckily I have time to think about this