okephoto - 7:19 pm on Jan 21, 2002 (gmt 0)

I've ended up in the middle of a cable supplier vs hosting company mess that's kind of interesting. I live where cable access is supplied by one company and they have a monopoly on the system. We also have dial-up available through another supplier. I have 30 web sites of my own and clients that I host, 15 on the west coast and 15 on the east coast.

If I try to access the server on the east coast through the cable company there is a glitch between the cable system and the servers on the east coast. What this means is that all of my sites located in the east are either extremely (30 seconds to minutes to load a page) slow or dead altogether. Occassionally they work the way they should. Using dial-up at the same time these sites are fine, proving that it's not a problem on the servers end (we have confirmed this).

The cable company refuses to accept responsibility for this stating:

"As to how you get these problems corrected, There are no good answers. As to who is actually responsible for solving these problems, that belongs to the owner of the domain name. The next one in line is the hosting service. Whomever you choose to host the sites should ensure that their IP classes are accessible from the Internet, and should track down any problems. This is why they get paid to host web sites in the first place. They are supposedly providing a reliable connection to the net (indirectly) and should become very concerned when this breaks down."

Here's the delema, the hosting company feels that the service they are providing as hosts is working correctly so this isn't their problem (and I tend to agree). They also feel that being a web site developer I shouldn't have to know how to solve these problems and I tend to agree with this as well. This same hosting company to their credit is looking into the matter even though they believe the access provider is responsible for providing service.

My feeling is the cable provider is being paid to provide access to the internet and since I am having problems accessing some of the internet through their system it is their responsibility.

Unfortunately for me one of their terms and conditions is:
"We reserve the right to terminate/restrict any access at any time for any reason. Our sole liability will be the refund of any unused portion of the monthly and/or modem rental fees; we make no claim as to providing guaranteed minimum/constant bandwidth and service may vary subject to subscriber usage".

Anyways, bottom line is my business is being affected drastically at this point, the cable company has a lousy attitude about this because they have a monopoly and some of my clients are getting upset because they and many customers cannot use their web sites.

Any ideas? We are beginning to look at the legal side of this but I can imagine this could be very expensive.

Thanks