so i guess it's like 15$ compared to 25$?

4/17/2008 1:55:56 AM

heh, yeah. I had usenet canceled altogether, but then I'd need something I could only find there, or wouldn't want to wait for something at 50KB/s so I would sign up for the 3 day unlimited @ 3.00. I realized quickly this was retarded after 3 times and renewed for a month.

[Edited on April 17, 2008 at 9:00 AM. Reason : /]

4/17/2008 8:59:49 AM

Giganews is the shit!

I remember taking my laptop to EB2 and using the NCSU network (graduate office) and it was pulling in at 9-10MBps strong. It was faster to take my ass to the campus to download and then drive home than to try from my 8Mbps RR connection.

Plus I have found that combined with http://www.newzbin.com NZB-O-Matic Plus is the best and smallest NZB's downloader, and it supports SSL too.

By the way, in the evening my RR node is so bogged down, I only get 500-600KBps average. But durring the day when I am at work its the full 1MBps :-( I cant wait to move out of this damned apartment.

Just my 2 cents.

[Edited on April 17, 2008 at 12:16 PM. Reason : .]

4/17/2008 12:16:07 PM

so, in theory, if you had been caught downloading something on the university's network before and received a letter, and you started using newsgroups instead of torrents or some other p2p, is it pretty much a sure thing that you're safe? i ask because if you log into the ncsu wireless, you have to use your unity ID or the guest network, but that's limited to HTTP, IIRC

4/17/2008 12:22:11 PM

Well I havent heard of the RIAA or blah blah blah, comming after USENET servers... It would seem that it would an easy target since they actually house the data that users are downloading. Unlike P2P systems that the data is on the users machines... But there must be some great wall preventing the big guns from controlling the data on USENET servers. More than likely USENET servers are survivng because they are not very easy for the masses of people to connect to. And its not 'free' for a high quality server.

On another note if the university sent you a note then this means 2 things... 1) A music/movie industry lawyer contacted NCSU with all your information and they protected your personal information from being released. NCSU promissed them that they would secure "you" from doing that shit anymore. So in turn the university sent you a letter saying you have been a bad boy. HAHA 2) The university doesnt filter traffic or log it in anyway, but if you are scared that someone is spying on your packets, just pay the additional $5 and use SSL to make your connection. Then no-one will see all the music and movies that your are pulling in, other than the host ;-)

[Edited on April 17, 2008 at 1:06 PM. Reason : .]

4/17/2008 1:05:09 PM

it's been said over and over that as long as you don't get NCSU in trouble you're generally pretty safe.

It's when ignorant kids come in and start sharing 500 torrents or broken 100th generation spice girls mp3 rips over morpheus sucking up all the outbound bandwidth that the notices tend to go out.

ripthevortex

4/17/2008 2:43:42 PM

i think i'm about to switch from usenetserver to giganews. 15$/month 105 day retention to 19$/month 200 day retention!!!!

-ok nvm scratch that. it's 30$/month after one month for ssh 200 day retention. I don't know if its worth an extra 15$.

What do you guys pay for giganews?

[Edited on April 21, 2008 at 8:18 PM. Reason : .]

4/21/2008 8:16:53 PM

i was paying 24.99 for the longest time. I definitely miss the retention difference.

4/21/2008 8:32:07 PM

105 day retention has been good. Although every now and then i want something past 105 days so i use the 3 day free trial with giganews than cancel it. See i'm paying 39.99$/3 months with usenetserver (105 retention + ssh) whereas with giganews i'd have to pay 29.99$ for 200 day retention + ssh. I don't think the extra hundred days is worth 17$ more a month. 13$/month is sweet.

4/21/2008 8:44:55 PM

^my thoughts exactly. It should be a better services, its more than twice as expensive.

4/21/2008 9:12:37 PM

anyone use http://www.powerusenet.com/ ?

5/4/2008 11:57:29 AM

^more expensive than usenetserver.

5/4/2008 2:20:35 PM

yeah but UNS has a lot of issues with incomplete files, especially anything around 30 days old because that's when they were having server problems, but other stuff is messing up too according to some people i know. i haven't had any problems but just looking into inexpensive alternatives in case i need them.

5/4/2008 9:25:27 PM

When did GN increase their retention? Pretty soon it might be worth switching back.

240 days. Newzbin matched.

7/16/2008 2:12:57 PM

eh 29.99$ is too much. although 240 days does seem nice.

I'm happy with usenetserver with around 110 days for 13$/month.

7/16/2008 2:17:13 PM

24.99 ? I don't bother with SSL.

or did they increase the price

7/16/2008 2:42:59 PM

yeah 25$ w/o ssh, and 30$ with.

Had a question about that. I use usenetserver and it says i'm using ssh. On my newsleecher program it has a checkbox for ssh. I don't normally have it checked. Does this mean i'm not protected by ssh? I would have thought usenetserver would have done the ssh automatically for my account. Should i enable it in newsleecher?

7/16/2008 2:49:09 PM

it must be enabled by the program.

7/16/2008 3:14:12 PM

and the server just has to be able to use ssh? Why we're paying extra for it?

-everytime i check the ssh box my connections give me an "unable to connect" 10061 error.

[Edited on July 16, 2008 at 3:24 PM. Reason : ..]

7/16/2008 3:19:16 PM

newzbin is no longer accepting new users, you must already have an account or know someone with one to join, each existing member has 5 invites they can use to establish a new user.

but heres the thing, if a user you refer gets banned, you will too. so be careful who you allow into our little world...

7/16/2008 3:51:14 PM

as opposed to getting your legs broken IRL by vouching for a sketchball in the scene.

7/16/2008 4:01:23 PM

^^ what sort of offenses result in banning?

7/16/2008 4:25:40 PM

i believe that there are issues with posting comments on the reports...

i dont really remember all the possiblities, but there must be something that can result in it, the memo on the home page stated that the day that it went private.

7/16/2008 4:32:42 PM

oh newzbin lol, for some reason I read that as usenetserver.

7/16/2008 5:07:46 PM

I keep getting a "10061 Connection Refused" error when trying to connect to usenetservers secure server. I'm paying for SSH so i should be able to use it. Plus it's not as consistant as the regular servers.

7/23/2008 10:47:47 AM

leaving UNS

takes too long to connect nowadays - keep getting 10061s. their servers seem overloaded with too many users/connections.

thinking about astraweb - 155 day retention for $15 and if you pay 3 months in advance it's only $13 a month

their server is on the west coast though so i'm going to do a 1 month trial and test speeds before paying for 3 months

8/31/2008 11:53:02 AM

I've decided giganews > *

8/31/2008 12:31:19 PM

astra has good speeds - they max out my connection

can't beat that price point/retention rate

the two reasons i didn't go with giganews are obviously price and because they send out letters to posters who put up content from HBO and some other places - it's an automatic letter, which means they're monitoring what's going through their servers. just something about that makes me uncomfortable

8/31/2008 12:40:59 PM

Although kinda pricey

Quote :

"I've decided giganews > *"

9/1/2008 12:32:19 AM

i want to see how much this 250gb cap from comcast affects me this month

9/1/2008 8:21:58 AM

Is there any way to take advantage of time warner cable's "boost". Whenever i start a connection it'll max out at 1.75mB/s for a little bit then fall back down to it's normal 1.17mB/s. I can manually start and stop connections and it'll maintain that 1.75mB/s. One of my friends said he uses a download manager to continusously start connnections and maintain that boost speed. Anyone tried this?

-on a side note today i've been getting "502 Max Num of Connectins Exceeded" errors after about 5 mins of downloading. I'm only trying to use 5/10 of my connections on usenetserver. Can't figure it out. Might be worth the switch to giganews if this keeps happening.

[Edited on September 15, 2008 at 7:36 PM. Reason : ..]

9/15/2008 7:32:24 PM

Quote :

"leaving UNS takes too long to connect nowadays - keep getting 10061s. their servers seem overloaded with too many users/connections. thinking about astraweb - 155 day retention for $15 and if you pay 3 months in advance it's only $13 a month their server is on the west coast though so i'm going to do a 1 month trial and test speeds before paying for 3 months"

As much as I've always been a UNS fanboy, I can't say that I disagree with anything said here. But last week UNS got an all new server farm and so far it looks like all the problems have cleared up. I haven't had a single hickup since making the switch. So just in case astraweb isn't working out, it might be worth giving UNS a look again.

9/15/2008 8:35:10 PM

Weird i've been getting:

Quote :

"Unable to Logon. Server Response: "502 Max Num of Connections Exceeded (10 connections)""

All day. I've tried it on multiple computers. Has to be a server problem.

9/15/2008 8:43:52 PM

On the new beta servers? as in you changed your server settings?

9/15/2008 9:29:08 PM

No haven't changed any settings. Still using: "news.usenetserver.com"

Sweet, just switched to "beta.usenetserver.com" and it's working now!!!

9/15/2008 9:45:48 PM

astraweb's not bad at all - 155days is actually really good for the price and they're constantly improving. it's up to 157 now so i'm happy with them. they max out my bandwidth as well so it makes no difference to me if it's west coast or in my backyard

9/15/2008 11:47:01 PM

switching from giga to astra

9/16/2008 1:16:45 PM

yeah you really can't beat their price point vs. retention value

and they don't monitor what you upload, if you ever post anything - a lot of poster buy a pay per download plan with them and never download anything, just use it to upload stuff

9/17/2008 9:45:49 PM

astraweb unlimited dsl 160+ days retention unlimited download, uncapped speed

$11/month

http://www.news.astraweb.com/specials/kleverig-11.html

there is no fucking way you can beat that special.

9/29/2008 11:29:05 PM

Guess i should switch. Although i don't know if it's worth the trouble. It's about the same price as usenetserver with a little better retention.

9/30/2008 12:36:22 AM

Damn. My latest 3 month period with UNS ends in about a month and a half. I have already canceled the auto-renew and was planning on trying out astraweb when it expired, but now I'm wondering if I should go ahead and lock in the $11 a month plan now. Any word on how limited the "Limited time only" is?

9/30/2008 2:16:06 AM

nope no idea, sorry

9/30/2008 2:21:27 AM

submitted a request for help when you asked the question and got a response a little bit ago--

Quote :

"We have a set number of accounts to be sold at the special price. Once these are sold, the offer will be withdrawn. So we are unable to provide an accurate date of when the offer will be withdrawn. It is best to signup as soon as you can to avoid disappointment."

even current customers of astra can get this plan according to them, although i didn't need any refund since my 1 month is over tomorrow or the day after anyways, so i just made a new account and couldn't tell you if this works or not--

Quote :

"If you would like to upgrade/downgrade your account, please signup again for your new account at: http://www.news.astraweb.com/signup.html When prompted for your username/password, do not proceed. Instead, email us your new order number (which will be emailed to you from 2CO after you have signed up) and your existing username and we will convert your account. A pro-rated refund will be issued on your previous order."

[Edited on September 30, 2008 at 3:52 AM. Reason : .]

9/30/2008 3:51:06 AM

Does astranet have ssl support?

9/30/2008 1:38:58 PM

astraweb has ssl support all across the board.

Quote :

"a lot of poster buy a pay per download plan with them and never download anything, just use it to upload stuff"

[Edited on September 30, 2008 at 1:49 PM. Reason : ]

9/30/2008 1:48:29 PM

lol don't incriminate yourself here

[Edited on September 30, 2008 at 2:07 PM. Reason : .]

9/30/2008 2:07:02 PM

The ssh server with usenetserver never works right. It's rarely a steady connection. Do they have a beta ssh server yet?

9/30/2008 3:53:21 PM

i thought they made that beta switch permanent now - that's why everyone was happy with them again.

is that not true?

9/30/2008 7:16:13 PM

http://www.usenetprovider-uebersicht.de/index.php?pageid=FlatrateProvider

in case you ever want to know all your options

10/1/2008 12:20:05 PM

Starting about 30 mins ago i'm getting a "Unable to receive a reply from the SuperSearch service" from newsleecher. Anyone else has this problem? There's nothing on the website about it being down.

10/10/2008 6:07:11 PM