Comcast ruined my perfect test environment
I hate Comcast. I've posted before about how much I dislike them. Now they've gone and ruined my ideal testing environment.
I am a total fan of using virtual machines. I spin a new one up whenever I have a new piece of software to test in an environment other than my own, or if I want to try out some software before installing it on my desktop. I have a nicely equipped server specifically for virtual machines. I use VMware Server running on top of Windows 2003.
Earlier this week, I had an idea for tweaking it out to be the ultimate test environment. I could install a mail server on it and add an MX record to my DNS for *.subdomain.qgyen.net, that way I could run lives tests on things like Mail Gateway. And on top of that, I could have the server run ISA Server and easy make sites on the various virtual machines publicly accessible. It know that when it receives a web request for test1.subdomain.qgyen.net, to redirect it to the proper internal virtual machine. It was working delightfully.
Then Comcast laid the smackdown on me last night. I haven't gotten any confirmation, but around 7pm, my connection went down. Finally, after a couple of hours, I started getting intrigued and was messing around. The cable modem showed it had a full signal, however it wouldn't pair up with the public network card. So then I switched it back to my old Linksys router with DD-WRT, and it works flawlessly. Go back to my server, nothing. Arg!
So after 3 days of utilizing the server for some testing, mostly doing some test emailing, Comcast decides to block it? What gives! Heck, years ago, I used run my entire domain from my home server. Email, website, and all. And they never blocked me. Now, maybe a couple of dozen emails over a few days and I get blocked.
I could do the same set up for email with DD-WRT no problem, but don't know about making the websites accessible (unless I did them using port translation). But even then, I think I will try to get some confirmation from Comcast before I do, since if they block my Linksys router, then I am really going to be pissed. I hate Comcast.