Joost Accepts Blame For Outages

April 20, 2007

Comcast this week denied message board rumors that it was blocking access to Internet-based TV service Joost, claiming that issues faced by consumers were likely the result of a Joost service upgrade.

Earlier this month, perplexed Internet users reported on Joost's message boards that they were unable to view video content. The exchange led some to speculate that telecom provider Comcast was at fault, as a majority of those affected were Comcast subscribers.

The issue found its way to community-based Web site Digg, where several other Comcast users complained about lost service before subscribers who had not lost service came out of the woodwork to downplay the accusations.

Comcast denied a Joost intervention. "Comcast is not blocking access to Joost in any way, and our customers should have no problem accessing the beta application on its site," said Jennifer Khoury, a Comcast spokeswoman.

Users who experienced a service interruption were likely operating with a previous version of Joost, according to Joost chief technology officer Dirk-Willem van Gulik.

In an e-mail to users, van Gulik said "we've got a new Joost version 0.9.2 ready for you, as your old 0.9.1 is no longer working."

Joost uses SSL technology and "once every other year or so, these certificates need to be renewed," said van Gulik. When that time came, "we did not realize that we had a copy hardwired into the 0.9.1 client by accident. Our apologies for this, but this is all part of being a beta."

In an April 11 blog post , Joost also said it had encountered problems mixing its P2P and traditional HTTP traffic. The company is working to improve "the interaction with the other back-end services," the post said. "This means that some viewers will get errors when trying to view some shows, which is regrettable, but … that now means that we can work on fixing it, which we are doing."

Copyright 2007 by Ziff Davis Media, Distributed by United Press International