Topic: WeatherLink & Comcast

[Jim's Wx Sta]

Is anyone else in the forum using WL to upload to Comcast personal web pages?

If so, have you recently been encountering problems?

For the past couple of weeks (about the time Comcast "upgraded" their per web pg's), I've been encountering freezing of the upload and partial screens.  At this time Comcast is failing to recognize the problem.  About a year ago I was shifted from Adelphia to Comcast and I did not have this problem with Comcast until recently.  Conversely, my Interwarn upload is having no problems uploading to Comcast.

Yesterday, I received an email from Steve in Mn who is having the same problem, with no resolution from Comcast.  And he believes he knows of at least one other in his vicinity having this trouble.

If anyone in the forum has any ideas on this sudden conflick between Comcast and WeatherLink, we'd appreciate your input.

Thanks, Jim

[NGRRFan]

I don't use WL, but I've been having a few "problems" over the past week or so.

Seems that Comcast is upgrading or doing maintenance on their servers, but I do not know for sure.

[capeweather]

Is anyone else in the forum using WL to upload to Comcast personal web pages?

If so, have you recently been encountering problems?

For the past couple of weeks (about the time Comcast "upgraded" their per web pg's), I've been encountering freezing of the upload and partial screens.  At this time Comcast is failing to recognize the problem.  About a year ago I was shifted from Adelphia to Comcast and I did not have this problem with Comcast until recently.  Conversely, my Interwarn upload is having no problems uploading to Comcast.

Yesterday, I received an email from Steve in Mn who is having the same problem, with no resolution from Comcast.  And he believes he knows of at least one other in his vicinity having this trouble.

If anyone in the forum has any ideas on this sudden conflick between Comcast and WeatherLink, we'd appreciate your input.

Thanks, Jim

Buy a domain name and have somebody else host it. You will be much happier. 

[Anthony]

I bought my domain at GoDaddy and currently use their free hosting. They also have very competive pricing on their paid hosting plans.

[roakey]

I use 1and1 and have been quite happy with their hosting.  A recommendation I've been giving folks for quite some time is that just about everyone should buy a domain, establish a mailing address using that domain name and at minimum forward mail to their ISP.  This way when you change ISPs, or, as often happens these days when one ISP buys another, you keep your mailing address, no need to send out mail to half your friends informing them of the name change (the other half of your friends half slip your mind until you get a phone call along the lines of "Hey!  Your email bounced!" )

1and1's beginner package is less than $50 a year and includes one domain name.  Heck, their basic package includes 600 (yes, six-hundred) email addresses so if $50 a year is too steep, get five people together, agree on a domain name, buy it together and setup forwarding to your respective ISPs (or just serve the mail on 1and1's servers).

I'm sure GoDaddy has a similar setup and prices.

Note that domain hosting and your ISP (who you dial into or connect to) can be two completely different entities.  Just realize that you need the ISP t connect to the internet, so you can't get a 1and1 domain, and drop Comcast/Earthlink/NetZero/whatever.

Roak

[racenet]

I bought my domain at GoDaddy and currently use their free hosting. They also have very competive pricing on their paid hosting plans.

The key here Anthony is that you bought your domain name. You didn't get it free with a hosting package. That is where the problem comes in. If you get a free domain name included with a hosting package, you'd better read the fine print. Chances are good that you really do not own the name, they do. If they go under, so does your domain name. It has happened to others here before and it isn't a fun ordeal.

You buy it, you control it, you keep it.



Bob

[wuhu_software]

Is anyone else in the forum using WL to upload to Comcast personal web pages?

Funny that you mentioned that. I just ended a live chat with Comcast support. This is the 2nd time that I have tried to report the problem.

I am not using Weatherlink but I do use my personal webspace for sending software to others (4 meg files). I noticed that when the upload begins, the first 100-300K are uploaded quickly. After that, the FTP client waits for about 30 seconds, then fails the upload.

To rule out an incompatible FTP client (I have always used WS_FTP Pro), I downloaded and installed SmartFTP. It failed in an identical manner.

There is definetely some problem with there FTP servers.

If you manually upload files via their publish.comcast.net site, the file uploads never fail.

I Googled to see if others were having a similar problem and found a group of people discussing it. Someone speculated that Comcast is being attacked with DOS attacks and that they may be throttling any uploads (even to their own servers). Although it is possible, it sounds very speculative. My guess is that they changed over the FTP servers to run different software and it has a problem of some sort.

On this 2nd attempt to resolve the problem, they are supposedly escalating the issue. They said they will call me within 48hrs, I will let you know what they have to say.

[jaded]

Steve called me on Saturday, asking if I was having these problems.  I really hadn't been looking for them, but after examining my log files I could see that yes, some of the uploads were failing (usually two or three of the image files from the 20 or so I upload every iteration.) 

I suspected that Comcast has been working on the security on their FTP servers.  It's possible that WeatherLink's FTP software is a "borderline" implementation and that with a security change, it may have stopped working.  So I suggested to Steve that he try a different product, such as Fling, to upload his data.  Now I see that others are trying many different products, all with some degree of failure.

Has anyone contacted Davis to find out exactly what the error codes they're seeing in their logs mean?  Or has anyone run a sniffer to see where the protocol fails?

[Jim's Wx Sta]

jadeters: Steve sent me the email about this and I've been monitoring your site and his as we  encounter this same problem. 

I was part of the Adelphia take-over from Comcast.  I moved my pwp's to Comcast about a year ago.  When this trouble started about two wks ago, as a temporary fix, I placed a redirect ( http://home.comcast.net/~winchesterweather/ ) on Comcast. I returned to the old Adelphia server as I am able to upload WL flawlessly to the old Adelphia site ( http://users.adelphia.net/~jracey/ ).

The other night I downloaded SmartFTP and began using it to try to upload the WL files to Comcast.  With Smart I'm uploading the completed WL files to comcast (test page  http://home.comcast.net/~winchesterweather/index.htm ) right behind WL uploading to Adelphia.  SmartFTP is one of the sample upload products shown on Comcast and yes, it too, is encountering problems.  The only difference is that Smart perists until it gets the job done.  Still at times you can see partial index html pages on the web site.

I've also experienced failures uploading, using Comcasts own upload tool.

Another problem that began last summer, but is now persistent about half the time is:  using the first format address will not function and instead sent you to a default page.
According to Comcast's instructions:

"The URL or address to your Personal Web Page can be in either of the following formats:

http://[USERNAME].home.comcast.net

or

http://home.comcast.net/~[USERNAME]"

Jim

[Jim's Wx Sta]

For those who've been having problems uploading WL to Comcast;

Today I've had no problems, provided I upload the index as htm (though this was failing previously).  If I upload the index as html, it is still failing.

I have no explanation for this.  However, so far today, this is working.

(If there is an html index on the server, it should be deleted, or it will take precedence over the htm index.)

Jim

[wuhu_software]

For those who've been having problems uploading WL to Comcast;

Today I've had no problems, provided I upload the index as htm (though this was failing previously).  If I upload the index as html, it is still failing.

I have no explanation for this.  However, so far today, this is working.

(If there is an html index on the server, it should be deleted, or it will take precedence over the htm index.)

Jim

Today was the first day that I was able to upload a 3 meg file without a timeout.

Maybe Comcast finally addressed the issue.

Will keep you posted if the errors return.

[Jim's Wx Sta]

This is three days now that WL has been uploading to Comcast normally as before.

Thanks to the other posters in this forum.  I copied and pasted some of your technical symptoms during my on line chat with the tech at Comcast last week.  I believe this may have helped them understand the problem.

The issue is resolved ... (for now anyway).

Jim