i think it's called COX BLOCKING.

so apparently Cox (cable internet) blocks port 80. this means i can't host DEEPBLACK (one of my webservers) from home. that makes me angry. we've got the super high-speed 5Mbps download 300kbps upload service, and i can't even truly take advantage of it. additionally, they block inbound AND outbound port 25 (SMTP), which is email, so i can't have my own mail server. grrr

my primary webserver (DEEPBLACK) is in dallas with my folks off of SWBell DSL (before it became SBC, so it's got some server-friendly loose policies). however, the connection has become a little flaky, and coupled with recent storms and a dead UPS battery, the server has been under the weather.

i seem to be having no luck at all with reliable personal web hosting, and i'm thinking its time i actually pay for a host and not worry about backups, email forwarding, power, network connectivity, and so on. as such, i'm looking for recommendations. for medium-load sites.

PowWeb is looking fairly attractive at its $7.77/mo price point, offering 5GB disk, 300GB transfer/mo, DNS mgmt, subdomains, unix, cronjobs, 5 MySQL databases, real-time logging, and raw log files access. however, i wish i had shell access.

BlueHost is a little cheaper at $7/mo, but offers less in disk space and transfer: 4GB, 100GB. Though it does have shell access. i think i'd prefer the 300GB transfer over that.

StartLogic is $7.50/mo, offers an uptime guarantee, but again is only 100GB transfer.

I don't know if 100GB is all I need... i really should monitor my traffic. what's the easiest way to do that? i've got everything logged to a database, so i suppose i should just let it do the number crunching of the file transfer. i'm also interested in a host that does frequent backups. any recommendations and/or comments would be great. thanks.