Readers and Cox speak out on Craigslist block by Cox Interactive

By Tom Foremski - June 8, 2006

A response from Cox, and lots of great commentary from SVW readers on the issue of net neutrality and the blocking of Craigslist.org by Cox Interactive. A security suite offered by Cox, and developed for Cox by Authentium, a security software company is the culprit.

Craigslist says it has spent months trying to resolve the issue. It's the type of issue that might become more common if there are no network neutrality laws.

Here are a selection of comments in chronological order :

Sixster writes:

I live in Santa Barbara, CA. My ISP is Cox. I just tried to access craigslist.org, it did not go through. I tried again with santabarbara.craigslist.org and it went right through. I tried again with plain craigslist.org and it went through fine. Meh...

originalgeek writes:

Lyle, it doesn't matter which end of the pipe the ISP employs measures to quash traffic. My money says Authentium does this because they're getting a little payola backscratch from Cox. Follow the money.


Florian writes:

A law about net neutrality shouldn't specify which filters ISPs can use. It would only have to specify the following:

1. A service/access provider is not allowed to be a content provider, both functions must be separated.

2. A service provider must allow unrestricted access to all parts of the internet, filtering may only happen with the following aspects:
- bandwidth
- clientside but not with software provided by the ISP

3. Websites/Companies have a right to sue ISPs or for lost business, their damages may be calculated by income generated from users with other ISPs.

SWE writes:

This article doesn't touch on the fact that Cox has an even greater horse in the game than newspaper classifieds. They are part owners of Trader publishing, i.e. Auto Trader, Truck Trader, Boat Trader, etc. Probably the biggest publisher of classified ads out there.

trixare4kids writes:

It's not just Cox, though. I use COVAD and can't get in. They say it's not them. Craigslist says it's not them. I've tried everything suggested on the various forums to no avail. I've given up and taken to using an anon proxy server when I want to access craigslist from home.

Cox writes:

Cox does not block access to any legal website and Craig's List is no exception. The problem lies with how the Security Suite software interprets Craig’s List’s initial packet connections, which results in an extremely slow connection.

Authentium — the company that designed Cox's security software — is aware of the problem and their engineers have modified the firewall driver by creating a beta version that resolves the issue. This version will be part of the next release of Cox High Speed Internet Security Suite and will be available to all Cox High Speed Internet users later this summer.

AceDeuce12 writes:

Cox blocks Skype (dropping 48% of the packets) making it unusable.

I've called them and they've denied it, but when I changed out cable modems, they gave me a different IP for about 10 minutes during which time I was getting 0% packet loss and Skype was working fine. After my regular IP was reassigned back to me, it went back to 48% packet loss again.

When I pointed this out to them, they said Skype was an unreliable and second rate service and I should not expect it work. (Of course Cox sells phone service here and is a direct Skype competitor)

There is absolutely no alternative to Cox in Scottsdale, Arizona. No DSL by any provider. I have been told that Cox does not block Skype on their 'commercial services' which Cox will sell me for a mere $289/month!

John Earnhardt writes:

The rhetoric on this issue has been amazing. What Google, Amazon, Ebay, Yahoo and others are pushing for is actually MORE REGULATION of the Internet.

The internet was founded on light or no regulation and many of these companies wouldn't even exist if more regulations were put on the Internet in its infancy.

Know how many times a service provider has abused its power of access? Exactly once. And the FCC quickly acted. These companies are BILLION dollar companies and want to the government to REGULATE in order to give them an advantage. The service providers are simply saying "let the market decide." Isn't the market a better place for the Internet to flourish than Capitol Hill?

I would commend Cisco's Charlie Giancarlo's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to everyone - this is where this issue should come out. (IMHO)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114973113198074497.html


See more comments here.


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By Tom Foremski - June 8, 2006 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Letters to SVW
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Comments (5)

Richard Bennett [TypeKey Profile Page]:

You say: "A security suite offered by Cox, and developed for Cox by Authentium, a security software company is the culprit."

But that's not the truth. The culprit is craiglist's badly formatted TCP headers.

The argument against Cox is actually this: "Why didn't you come up with a workaround for the bug in craigslist faster? Oh, monopoly!"

Tell the truth Tom, people are starting to call you the Dan Rather of the blogs.

Posted: June 19, 2006 12:03 PM

Tom Foremski [TypeKey Profile Page]:

I would love to be the Dan Rather of blogs, he had a long superb career :-)
I asked if this was a net neutrality issue? I asked why does it take so long to fix something like this? This problem could have been sorted out a long time ago if there was communication between the parties involved, but it wasn't. Why not? I pointed out that this type of situation does not look good given the current debate on net neutrality. Therefore shouldn't it be fixed quickly so that it is not used as an example of bad net behavior? Am I not asking the right questions?
And as for conspiracy theorists out there, you'd better look elsewhere, there is no grassy knoll here...

Posted: June 20, 2006 10:35 AM

Richard Bennett [TypeKey Profile Page]:

Dan Rather turns a colorful phrase, but at the end of the day he can't tell fact from fiction.

Go read Authentium's side of the story. You've been uncritically repeating an outrageous lie here that any tech journalist should be able to see through.

Re Craig’s post today, in which he says - “I wanted to give the Authentium folks to today to respond; that didn’t happen, and I guess we’ve waited long enough.”

This isn’t accurate. Three business days ago (i.e. last week), Ray Dickenson, our head of products, initiated a phone call to Craig - at his offices - and spoke with Craig directly. During that call, Ray shared with Craig the following information:

1. The technical issue caused by the conflict between Craigslist servers and the Authentium firewall is fully resolved, and was resolved back in March. The beta fix was made available to all customers at that time. It was made available through their support organizations to every subscriber requesting it. This is normal procedure for our beta software releases.

2. In terms of our responsiveness, Authentium reacted immediately upon hearing about the issue by calling Craig. Upon understanding the issue, we acted immediately to resolve it. We posted a fix within days of its emergence in February. The fix has been available ever since.

3. Regarding release dates, this fix involved rewriting of a core system-level component. Our process for releasing these kind of components is very strict - the final version enters GA only after the completion of several cycles of QA testing on the next full version release of our security suite, and beta release testing. This practice is followed by most, if not all, system-level software developers.

As I’ve said before in other posts, we have no ax to grind here - this isn’t a story about net neutrality - it is basically a story about different approaches to handling data.

For more on the technical details of this, please browse to the Craigslist link at www.authentium.com/support/ or contact your Authentium service provider partner support center.

Thank you,

John Sharp
Founder & CEO
Authentium

Bottom line: Cox Cable never blocked Craig's List.

Posted: June 20, 2006 12:28 PM

Tom Foremski [TypeKey Profile Page]:

I'm glad that I can provide a platform for all parties to interact and sort this thing out...

Posted: June 20, 2006 1:04 PM

Richard Bennett [TypeKey Profile Page]:

Yes, so am I.

And now that it's obvious that Craig Newmark lied to you (and to the rest of us), isn't it incumbent on you to denounce him? I mean, it's no longer he said-she said, the story told by Authentium is verifiably true and Newmarks is provably false.

Lying to a journalist has got to be at least as serious as lying to a Grand Jury.

Posted: June 20, 2006 6:48 PM

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