I’ve been yelling at working with Cox the last couple of months days to figure out why so many of our readers who have Cox as their Internet Service Provider cannot get directly to our site.  A very nice (female) manager in their Tulsa Support organization named Linda has been tremendously helpful. 

Yes.  I have at last reached someone there who gave a damn about whether you could read our site.  Notice it’s a WOMAN and I didn’t get a pat on my shoulder telling me it’s all in my head when I escalated this for the gajillionth time the other day.

Apparently, a small broadband provider in Australia called iiNet has blocked Cox traffic to/from our site.  The vagaries of the Internet causes traffic between our host and Cox to be directed via Australia thru iiNet – I couldn’t even begin to guess why this is the case.  (There is an Internet routing concept called “least cost routing” that wouldn’t appear to be in affect here.) 

Aside from being blocked, one of a few possible outcomes of routing Cox customers thru Australia is that it can take FOR-BLOODY-EVER for Cox customers to load our site.  I mean.  We literally have speed of light issues with traffic going so far there and back.  This is bad on many levels.

Suffice to say that Cox has escalated this internally to their Third Level Support organization (a.k.a. Geek Cubed, my name not theirs) and they’re working on it.  I don’t know how much longer you should expect it to take to resolve, but it is definitely being worked.  I hear from Cox regularly and I’ll keep you all updated.

A related issue for those of you who read us thru a feed burner like Google Reader.  Again, for what reason we don’t know, but apparently subscribing to one of our two URL’s  – http://www.goodbadandunread.com or http://goodbadandunread.com – can make a difference in how quickly you see our posts.  I’m subscribed via Google Reader to the url without the www in it (http://goodbadandunread.com) and I see posts within just a few minutes of them posting.  I understand that if you are subscribed to the url with the www in it (http://www.goodbadandunread.com) it can be several hours before you see our posts. 

So check your subscription.  We post all during the day, typically 9am thru 1am every couple of hours.

Ain’t the Internet grand?

(P.S.  I just “got” my tag and cracked myself up.)