BeigeJournal

As I’ve explained before, it was very easy to get the bits flowing over my Time Warner Road Runner cable Internet connection. Getting the Road Runner e-mail to work was much harder.

Their e-mail was not a big priority with me because I prefer to send and receive e-mail through my web hosting provider, but I wanted to get it to work. All the configuration web pages ask for your user name, which I was never told. The usernames are usually first-initial and last name, plus maybe a number. I was able to guess mine easily enough. You can then reset your password to a random series of numbers by giving the cable modem MAC address. I then tried to change my new password to something more memorable, but it would just accept my username and password and then go instantly back to asking for username and password. The webmail would give a “session timed out” error immediately, which at least is an error message, even if not a helpful one. By Googling I learned that both these pages use java programs and make some sort of connection on an undocumented port that your firewall, if you set it up right, will block. Since the port is not documented anywhere I could find, I gave in and disabled the firewall completely for a few minutes to change the password. The webmail I suppose should just be avoided, which is not a big loss.

The official FAQs are very stingy with the information.