Today I was setting up my WRT-54G to provide a PPTP VPN connection to my network for when I am away from home. I got everything up and working, but I couldn’t connect from outside the network. After an hour or so of tinkering I decided to check on Google to see if cox was blocking port 1723. I could find no mention of it. In some cases I saw reports of people saying cox was blocking VPN, but others were saying it worked fine. So I tinkered some more. Still no workey.
So I broke down and called Cox. Turns out that cox considers VPN a business service and has it on a rolling block. Some days it will work, and others it will not. Technically on a residential account you’re not supposed to use it at all. Weak.
As the country gets more technologically savvy, more and more people are going to want to host VPNs in order to access their home computers and internet connections. Consultants will want to have secure access to their clients home networks.
Cox recently upped the bandwidth of their residential connections, and it’s crazy fast. I love the speed available. But I would gladly trade that increase in speed for VPN access.