Mea Culpa/Feathers in my mouth
I was wrong yesterday. After days and days of complaining about the connection, the resident Puter Ho finally took a look at the problem. It seems, in his quest to find the perfect P2P software, he was running something called Waste (the name should have been a clue, right?).
If this was the "Geek Gazette" I could write pages about the following subject. As it is, I'll give a quick rundown with links and get on with the crow eating and explanation of what happened. If you are a user of Winamp, you have touched base with Nullsoft, parent of Winamp, Gnutella, Waste and others. About four years ago, Nullsoft was bought, uhh, acquired by AOL/Time Warner/God? .
Now Grasshopper, Nullsoft was founded by Justin Frankel , a really cool dude who creates great open source software to share with the masses. This does not fit in AOL's game plan. So, as happened to Gnutella before it, Waste was pulled by AOL from Nullsoft's site the day after it was released. Rumors flew that Frankel was leaving after he said as much in his blog, but the latest news tells us that he will stay to deliver up the latest version of Winamp. Hot topic if this was the Geek Gazette, don't you think?
The Geek Gazette this ain't and I came here for humble pie and to explain what happened.
Waste is a P2P software that creates a closed circle P2P group where you can chat, see online/offline status (ala ICQ or AIM), and share files within your group. It seemed to work well, but apparently it doesn't just rely on the public/private keys to keep information within the group, it also routes requests through third parties within the group to hide where requests are originating and where the replies are going. So even though on top of things, it didn't seem to be doing anything, in the background it was routing huge amounts of data through unbeknownst to us.
It's gone now and speed is back up to par. No huge apology to Charter simply because their service often really does suck and I've never groused about it before. At least not here. :)
I'm off to see if I can make a cobbler with three plums, two apricots, and a pound of cherries. Mmmmmm..