smtp.cox.net not connecting

I am using Thunderbird on a Windows 7 laptop from my home.  Since last monday I had been unable to send mail because smtp.cox.net was unavailable.  Yesterday I tried pinging it and it too failed.  Then after a few hours I pinged again and this time it responded.  I then sent a test mail to my own address through TBird and it worked.  Great, I thought, the system has corrected itself but then receiving email stopped.  The program would say connecting to pop.cox.net and then stop.  I have used this  service for many years and while there had been a few temporary outages with smtp, it had always self-corrected within a few hours and never with pop.  Sending/receiving mail within myemail.cox.net has worked fine.  Another funny thing, when smtp started working and pop was still working, a bunch of old emails also got pulled.