Giganews, any idea what's happening?

Just cancelled giganews and signed up for astra with the $11 link, so far so good, thanks for the tip :)
 
And the added bonus is that on a lot of group astraweb offers a higher retention than giganews.

Due to increased amount of data on usenet, giganews only carries 200 days on a lot of groups.
 
I'll definitely be buying from Astraweb if I ever lose my free Usenet (I'm getting free Giganews from BT :D - it maxes my connection because my internet is so crap, so I have no need for any more).

However, if we ever get better internet, or move house, then I'll buy from Astraweb (I always had my mind set on Giganews).

I'm actually tempted to buy from Astraweb now and use my free Usenet as a backup as my free Giganews doesn't offer SSL.

If I was to buy 25GB for $10, would it last 'forever'? Basically could I download 10GB one month, then only download the other 15GB e.g. 6 months after?
 
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So far I have to admit im a bit unimpressed, seems to be maxing out with 20 connections the europe server with ssl at a top speed of 30mbps. Swapped back to my Giganews that I still didnt totally cancel and bam back upto 48mb solid. Shame as its allot cheaper. Will try their non ssl server and see if its any better. :(
 
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DAvE18 said:
So far I have to admit im a bit unimpressed, seems to be maxing out with 20 connections the europe server with ssl at a top speed of 30mbps. Swapped back to my Giganews that I still didnt totally cancel and bam back upto 48mb solid. Shame as its allot cheaper. Will try their non ssl server and see if its any better. :(
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I'm sorry but for the price difference you could have 2 astraweb accounts, and still save money!

Thus easily maxing out your 48 meg connection, and have a few pound left over.
 
Dont be sorry its your opinion. mine is I dont want to have 2 recurring paypal payment and set up 2 different servers to get the same speed I am on giganews and save myself like 4 quid. I have suspended my giganews for a month as I now have a month of astraweb to use.

I will use it for this month and see if it improves. I have cleared all cache files etc and have a good few downloads ready to go so will see how it goes. see if it picks up the speed.
 
To me that would add no extra effort, as mine is taken straight off my card. Setting a server up is a one time event, that takes less than 30 seconds. So its £44 a year for 30 seconds work.

Have you not tried 10 connections from the us server, and 10 connections from the Europe server.
 
Weird you don't get full speed with 20 threads. My mate set up Astra on a VPS in a datacentre and gets 9MB/sec (i.e. ~ 72mbps) with just a few connections. I must admit though, since I've jumped from Giga to Astra I've found I have to increase my connections from 5 to anything up to 15 during peak times to maintain full speed (2.2 MB/sec).

It's definitely not my ISP (Easynet = no congestion or throttling/capping issues), and Astra have asked for a traceroute during the 'bad' times to help them find and remedy the issue. At least they're willing to address it :) Way better for me than paying £23.xx to Giga for essentially the same service. I did like Giga but got sick of the missing articles and pseudo-retention in the end (eg 200 day retention in some groups).
 
DAvE18 said:
It just looks soo shady though and I have been with giganews years but im going to try astraweb seeing as you lot convinced me ;)
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I was exactly the same, having had a Giganews account for around five years but, after trying Astraweb for a month, I've now ditched Giganews.
 
It seems to have picked up a bit by switching the ssl to default port. Wierd, Will also try 10 us and 10 european. Dont get me wrong its running around 38mb solid now, I can live with that just now and will try a few things see if I can get it as fast as giga.
 
i just love usenet. i use usenet.net
$14 a month for unlimited. 5 streams unencrypted.
do many people find that having encrypted makes a difference?
 
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Yup doesn't slow anything down, anybody snooping on your connection will only be able to an SSL encrypted connection between you and Astranews they wouldn't be able to see the payload, which obviously would be a LINUX distro.
 
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