I have a cable connection from Adelphia. I also use Aol at the same time. I connect my Aol client via tcp/ip setting and log on to the net using my Adelphia connection.

What's strange is, when I goto a site to test my environmental variables sometimes it tells me I have an Aol IP address!! When I get that I log off my Aol client and immediately it tells me I have another IP address from Adelphia!!

So now I logged on to Aol this way again and pinged the the aol IP address. doesn't respond. But when I ping my Adelphia IP it responds.

So my question is, how in the world is this happening? I did an ipconfig and the aol ip doesn't show up at all!

just dont even try to figure it out, someone posted an indepth configuration of the AOL TCP/IP protocol implementation and its totally different to any normal standards.

Id suggest you stop using AOL altogether and just use your cable... why on gods earth would you want to use AOL when you have cable anyways!!

you can get your AOL e-mail through webmail!!

and dont even dream of telling me you use any of the other features of AOL ?? lol :D

-XT

hehe... actually it's my friend's. I let him use it when he comes over. He loves the fast cable.

I have the same thing, and it's done the same thing. If you go into winipcfg and then select the AOL Adapter from the dropdown once you're signed in, you'll see the AOL IP. We're getting rid of the BYOA plan however since the bastards upped the price (basically they just added 2 hours "free" dialup time, added in the costs for it knowing at least 90% of the people wouldn't be getting near dialup and then sent out a notice). So we're canning them completely. They're just a rip-off anymore. No good e-mail filtering, messed up way of dealing with things (aka they don't) and they're basically outsourcing everything you see anymore.

Sorry. I know I am going to be criticized by 437 other Web Hosting Talk members. But what is so bad about AOL? If it is so bad, why do over 30 million people use AOL? Maybe it is a trick?

Originally posted by TimM
Sorry. I know I am going to be criticized by 437 other Web Hosting Talk members. But what is so bad about AOL? If it is so bad, why do over 30 million people use AOL? Maybe it is a trick?

Personally I think AOL sucks big nuts.. It is WAY over priced, slow, software sucks and to talk to customer service it is like being innterogated by the FBI. BUT for people like my dad who dont know jack crap about the internet or computers at that it is perfect and VERY easy to use. Plus they have alot of parental controls for kids. I used to sit in AOL chat before there was any such thing as the internet and I admit I had a blast. But would I pay it now.. hell no.. I think the main thing is how easy it is to use. As we see more people getting cable/dsl where they can simply click on IE and be on the internet I think things will change. Its just the whole dial-up thing confusion and setting up email etc I think that gets people confused. I have a ladt at work who just got cable and KEPT her AOL for something like $9.95 a month make no sense to me but I think AOL's days will be outnumbered in 5 years or so.

Well, ive been in the "Why do so many people use it if its crap" conversatyion many times before.

Here is why i dont like it:

SMTP, it hijacks your SMTP, and you cant you any other SMTP server except theirs, even if you try!!

e-mail, you are forced to use their application for e-mail, you cant use outlook or any other program, meaning when you move away from AOL you loose all your e-mail.

Internet, connection speeds tend to be sluggish and some pages wont even load of AOL has deemed them to be inappropriate on their firewall.

Installing their software which pops up tons of adverts every time you load it, then you think, im paying for these advertisements to be here!!

Dialler, you MUST use their dialler, hey AOL, you never heared of any built in dialers that every other ISP in the whole world seems to find perfectly adequate?? - windows, linux, etc... they all have their own built in diallers, why the <bad language> dont they use them!

AOL, Doesnt work with linux or anything else bar windows

You must install their bloatware, huge installation that wrecks your computer if you try to remove it and reconfigures so many settings on your PC its unreal, it puts adverts in every application it can, rebrands IE to AOL's IE and even has the cheek to rebrand Outlook to AOL, EVEN THOUGH its not even compatible with AOL.

----------

In conclusion, it sucked, if thats the case, why was I with them for almost 5 months?? because they were the only people that provided Un-metered internet access to NTL users in the northwest of the UK.
Why did i stay so long? because i was with them for 5 months in total, and:

Month 1: FREE
Month 2: Billing Error, gave me it FREE
Month 3: I called them with a fake connection problem, FREE
Month 4: I paid cos i ran out of ideas
Month 5: I cancelled my account and they gave me it FREE as a trial to try and keep me

So i paid £15 for internet access for 5 months, with no phone bills :D

You see why so many people use AOL? many because they have to, and as some have said, becase the more you get those bits of plastic shoved through your letter box the more you might want to try it.
Plus the worlds most stupid of people that dont know what a double click is find it easy to use !!

-XT

Originally posted by OKIHost

I used to sit in AOL chat before there was any such thing as the internetUh... no. You didn't.

Time for a history lesson?

The internet predates aol by more than a decade -- even assuming you were "sitting in aol chat" when aol kicked off in 1989 -- which is pretty unlikely, since aol was really just a bbs at the time, a revision of Steve Case's Quantum Computer Services -- there was already "such thing as the internet." There also already was Compuserve, GEnie, Prodigy, the Source, and Viewtron.

You may have been using aol chat before you knew there was an internet, but some of us were already here waiting for you.

Originally posted by TimM
If it is so bad, why do over 30 million people use AOL? Maybe it is a trick? Yes it is. It's a little trick called "marketing."

And of course, the fact is 30 million people don't use AOL. All of the online services inflate their membership figures, by simply counting signups and not subtracting nonrenewals. So maybe it's 10 million that actually use it... but how many of those do so while complaining every time about the level of service? How many would jump ship in a minute, except that the service came free with the brand new PC they got for Christmas, and now the whole family knows the email address, and the kids have all their screen names set up... and yeah, it's hard to get connected and a lot of things on this PC don't work that well any more since we installed the aol upgrade, but really anything else might not work any better so we might as well stick with aol... after all, I just heard that 30 million people use it, and they can't all be wrong, can they?

I'm still trying to figure out why my environmental variables sometimes tell me I have an Aol IP. My computers are behind a router by the way.

A little AOL insider infor

AOL uses a rotating IP address...its never the same, thats how security is accomplished, they wont tell you that but thats what they do, don't even ask me how it works....when you log on to aol via TCP/IP your computer now has 2 IP addresses....one totaly different unrelated to your ISP, and your ISP...its a wiered system!:D

Originally posted by onthecatwalk
A little AOL insider infor

AOL uses a rotating IP address...its never the same, thats how security is accomplished, they wont tell you that but thats what they do, don't even ask me how it works....when you log on to aol via TCP/IP your computer now has 2 IP addresses....one totaly different unrelated to your ISP, and your ISP...its a wiered system!:D

So by changing a particular network interface's IP address you can go around the internet and harass people and they'd get the wrong IP address because it's spoofed? Wow I didn't htink that was possible with tcp/ip.

well if you notice AOL has its own TCP/IP protocol, you see one IP address but there is really like 50..AOL does keep logs however, when you had what IP address.