I use news hosting and giganews. Giga for retention mostly.

I have a block news account as backup, and Astra as main. Im happy with the services they provide. Just make sure you choose a block account that has a other backend then your main.

And here's that list: http://www.newsgroupservers.net/newsgroup_server_resellers

I have tried

Easynews,

*Astraweb,

*Giganews,

*Usenetserver,

and currently newshosting.

With all of the stared servers I ran into bandwidth caps after 800GB or so a month in the past. I am not saying they currently do. With newshosting I am able to download from 3 different locations with 8 threads each all at the same time. With all 3 Comcast lines maxed out. This is great is you split the plan between more than one person. I paid $99.99 for a year or $8.33 a month. Or if you share with 2 others $2.78 a month for unlimited downloads. This was the best bang for the buck that I could find when I was looking. They also have a free Newshosting Usenet Browser that you can use. This was surprisingly better than I expected. After using xnews, newzbin and newsleecher in the past. Newsleecher still wins out though.

 

Special pricing is linked below...

 

http://www.newshosting.com/partners/?a_aid=email&a_bid=04ad6052&chan=code76

 

I used Giganews, AstraWeb and Supernews.

Never problems with bandwidth caps. I did dowdload ~ 1 TB per day when a HDD was defect, and never a cap.

 

Is that normally not done by the ISP, and not by the usenet server company ?

The only caps I've run into were enforced by my ISP.  My single largest d/l session was when I was catching up with sickbeard and had my line maxed out for about a week.  I did almost 2TB, I think - and got a bunch of flak from my ISP at the time.

I use news hosting and giganews. Giga for retention mostly.

I'm new to usenet. What does retention mean?

I use news hosting and giganews. Giga for retention mostly.

I'm new to usenet. What does retention mean?

its amount of days that binary files are accessible via your newshoster.

simply put if your retention is 900 days and the file was uploaded 1200 days ago you wont be able to download it

Does anyone have any recommendations for a block usenet account to be used as a backup server?

 

I am using astraweb, and have been happy, but every once in a while a download will be 10 blocks short and I end up wasting several gigs of download quota

 

I was using a free account from xsusenet and it worked really well, but they recently changed the system and the free accounts no longer have ssl and they get a 10 day retention rather than a 400 day one (kind of a joke)

 

blocknews.net is selling blocks that don't expire for very good prices, but to me it seemed too good to be true. 25 gigs for $8.25, no expiration, SSL, 1400 day retention and 50 connections??? That would last me literally forever as a backup server. anybody dealt with this company before?

 

Thanks

 

I use NewsDemon as a backup block server.  Unlimited speed, 10Gb, 50 connections for $2.  Works fine for me.  No SSL but retention is 1546+

 

Here's their site with my referral link embedded.

I use Giganews and I've been totally happy with with it.

 

So has anyone looked into VPN services? I am very interested in locking up my network using a third party VPN and it's difficult to know which provider to go with. StrongVPN looks pretty solid from this side of the fence, but how much will it slow down your connection and is there any cap?

I use Giganews and I've been totally happy with with it.

 

So has anyone looked into VPN services? I am very interested in locking up my network using a third party VPN and it's difficult to know which provider to go with. StrongVPN looks pretty solid from this side of the fence, but how much will it slow down your connection and is there any cap?

Huh? The bundled VPN is pretty much the only reason to pay GN's extortionate prices!

I just signed up for Supernews, so far I like it better than astraweb. I'm getting less errors and more complete downloads.

supernews has some issues with around 600 days old posts, but i guess all providers have had issues in the past so some incomplete files..

I gotta say so far I'm pretty unhappy with Supernews. After a few weeks of using it I've have lots of downloads say the par2 recovery files are not available. I had never seen that error before with Astraweb. If I switch to my still active Astraweb account server and hit retry they download with no problems. Luckily I paid with PayPal because I'm thinking about filing a complaint and asking for a refund.

I gotta say so far I'm pretty unhappy with Supernews. After a few weeks of using it I've have lots of downloads say the par2 recovery files are not available. I had never seen that error before with Astraweb. If I switch to my still active Astraweb account server and hit retry they download with no problems. Luckily I paid with PayPal because I'm thinking about filing a complaint and asking for a refund.

All older files, or new stuff too?

Yeah, I've only seen major incompletes on very old stuff, as in over 1300 days old.

 

I've hardly touched by blocknews account and have completed almost everything since I joined SuperNews over a year ago. My stats:

 

I gotta say so far I'm pretty unhappy with Supernews. After a few weeks of using it I've have lots of downloads say the par2 recovery files are not available. I had never seen that error before with Astraweb. If I switch to my still active Astraweb account server and hit retry they download with no problems. Luckily I paid with PayPal because I'm thinking about filing a complaint and asking for a refund.

All older files, or new stuff too?

 

 

Both old and new stuff.

I gotta say so far I'm pretty unhappy with Supernews. After a few weeks of using it I've have lots of downloads say the par2 recovery files are not available. I had never seen that error before with Astraweb. If I switch to my still active Astraweb account server and hit retry they download with no problems. Luckily I paid with PayPal because I'm thinking about filing a complaint and asking for a refund.

All older files, or new stuff too?

 

 

Both old and new stuff.

 

PM me something specific -- headers or an NZB or an nzbindex.nl link. Also, you can try this tool to check completion: http://www.zoon.dk/nzb-completion-checker/

i lately switched over from giganews to supernews, and until 2-3 days ago everything was fine.

 

these 2-3 days though i get lots of incompletes (missing pars) and will likely fill a complaint too if this goes on for a few more days.

 

never had problems with giganews (7 years since i subscribed) but they're just too expensive nowadays.

supernews is giganews reseller

yes, i know but i dont think its bad luck i'm getting incomplete stuff..something is wrong

 

p.s the nzbs i download are mostly a week old

 

 

edit: well seems like supernews wasnt the culprit after all, since many more reported missing pars on the aformentioned NZBs.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a block usenet account to be used as a backup server?

 

I am using astraweb, and have been happy, but every once in a while a download will be 10 blocks short and I end up wasting several gigs of download quota

 

I was using a free account from xsusenet and it worked really well, but they recently changed the system and the free accounts no longer have ssl and they get a 10 day retention rather than a 400 day one (kind of a joke)

 

blocknews.net is selling blocks that don't expire for very good prices, but to me it seemed too good to be true. 25 gigs for $8.25, no expiration, SSL, 1400 day retention and 50 connections??? That would last me literally forever as a backup server. anybody dealt with this company before?

 

Thanks

yes, i know but i dont think its bad luck i'm getting incomplete stuff..something is wrong

 

p.s the nzbs i download are mostly a week old

 

 

edit: well seems like supernews wasnt the culprit after all, since many more reported missing pars on the aformentioned NZBs.

With all the missing articles I've been running into lately, I switched to Tweaknews.

No download limits, unlimited speed option available, block accounts, 10GB free trial,

https://www.tweaknews.eu/?page=about

I also switched to Tweaknews few days ago and I cant say I'm satisfied with their speed. I bought 10Mbit account and it's very unstable, I should be maxing it at 1.2MB/s (my connection is 20Mbit), but last few downloaded files average at 950KB/s

Blocknews is great

I've been a usenetserver customer for years. Never had any big issue, don't intend to switch. The yearly plan is like $96 or so, not sure what Supernews charges for a year.

Giganews performance has just been unacceptable over the last month or so.  I am going to suspend my account and give a couple of others a try.  I am very disappointed.