Virgin media 50mb and usenet problem?

ferret face · 29 Jun 2010 at 22:23

Hi

Anyone got 50mb and use usenet particulary giganews? Any problems cos mine has been down to 300KB/s for the last couple of days.
cheers

Rainmaker · 30 Jun 2010 at 00:53

Nope, sorry. I'm with Giganews and have been getting 6.32 MB/sec rock solid as always mate. Have you power cycled the modem, router and PC? Are you getting low speeds in general, or just from Giga?

bluejulie · 30 Jun 2010 at 01:24

Also on virgin here & get a solid 6.32'ish-mb/s from most places inc usenet/ ftp's etc etc...

maybe you have changed a setting on your router or who knows maybe virgin have been digging up the roads in your area m8 & not informed you...
If it keeps up then get on the Blower & give em hell I say

asim18 · 30 Jun 2010 at 02:02

Try Virgin's own server.

It's always better for me. I get about 2.1MB/s up and down on Astraweb but a solid (I really mean rock solid) 2.33MB/s on Virgin.

I'm on the 20Mb connection.

Rainmaker · 30 Jun 2010 at 02:05

I've never really noticed a difference on 50 meg, but VM do peer heavily with Newshosting (who supply their NNTP) so it's worth a shot. If the OP is getting such poor speeds from Giga though, something's definitely wrong that a NSP switch won't fix.

Try it anyway, OP.

Server: news.virginmedia.com
Port: 119
Authentication: Not required

Set the connections to 10 at least, preferably 12 to 15. See what you get. Bear in mind they only carry 7 days retention or so. Have you checked the power levels on the downstream? Is HTTP and FTP slow too? And as per my last post have you rebooted everything?

Oh and wireless, or wired? If the former, try plugging in direct and rebooting, then seeing what you get.

asim18 · 30 Jun 2010 at 02:22

Rainmaker said:
...Newshosting (who supply their NNTP)...

I've read this a few times on the internet, but Newshosting does not supply VM's NNTP service. It's actually Highwinds Media Group which provides VM's NNTP service.

Rainmaker · 30 Jun 2010 at 02:24

asim18 said:
I've read this a few times on the internet, but Newshosting does not supply VM's NNTP service. It's actually Highwinds Media Group which provides VM's NNTP service.

Sorry it's late, and you're half-right (as was I). It is indeed the Highwinds group who supply the service, the flagship of which is... Newshosting.

You get pot luck when you connect. Sometimes you get NH, other times Thundernews etc. The retention varies between them too. NH seems to provide the advertised 7 days, but Thundernews gives up to double that if you drop lucky.

ferret face · 30 Jun 2010 at 08:47

Cheers guys
i've just checked it again and its back to normal speeds after 2 days, so not sure what was going but thanks for the help
ferret

Rainmaker · 30 Jun 2010 at 09:07

ferret face said:
Cheers guys
i've just checked it again and its back to normal speeds after 2 days, so not sure what was going but thanks for the help
ferret

It could actually be your area. VM are carrying out a lot of trials around the Leicester and Coventry areas atm (5 and 10Mbps upload) and their messing has caused quite a few "unrelated" issues surrounding speed and reliability.

lebob · 30 Jun 2010 at 22:10

Same problem here, 300KB/s for the past 3 days.

ferret face · 30 Jun 2010 at 22:55

Well i just tested it again and its back to 300 ish KB/s. i hope they havent started some kind of throttling.

Lebob are you from the London area by chance??

MasterPlan1 · 1 Jul 2010 at 11:34

FYI, what are you getting? if it's from retention on NNTP, that is usually pretty slow. I usually get about 300-600k\s when getting stuff from retention servers.

ferret face · 1 Jul 2010 at 11:57

not sure what you mean by retention servers, I just connect to giganews server like I always do via newsreader.

Its always been full speed but for the last few days its at ~300KB/s... just checked and its still slow

MasterPlan1 · 1 Jul 2010 at 12:24

S: (n) retention, keeping, holding (the act of retaining something)

When a NNTP site says they have 365 day retention, it means they hold all articles for a year. Now, I guess to keep all of that information on a high speed link would be costly, so they'd probably move the older stuff (say, 60-120days worth) onto a slower server where the upkeep of it isn't so costly.

But anyway, I downloaded at a full 2.3MB\s before I left work this morning, so it's fine for me, I'm connected to either Gillingham or Basildon. But if I were to download something that was ancient, I'm sure it'd go slow.

apatia77 · 1 Jul 2010 at 12:29

I always max my 20mb Virgin connection on Astraweb or VM usenet.

lebob · 1 Jul 2010 at 13:14

ferret face said:
Well i just tested it again and its back to 300 ish KB/s. i hope they havent started some kind of throttling.

Lebob are you from the London area by chance??

Yeah North London, also getting the same speeds from VM own server.

Clown · 1 Jul 2010 at 13:29

I'm from London and I'm getting 6MB/s from Astraweb.

ferret face · 1 Jul 2010 at 16:27

well mines still running really slow, I guess i have to pluck up the courage to ring Virgin support....gulp!

Last time i did that it was a complete nightmare and took days of wrangling to get my issue fixed.

Daaaveee · 1 Jul 2010 at 16:37

Good luck mate, hope you have better luck than me

My usenet downloading is 300-1000kb/s at the moment using Astraweb, 50meg Virgin line.

Rainmaker · 1 Jul 2010 at 17:07

Daaaveee said:
Good luck mate, hope you have better luck than me My usenet downloading is 300-1000kb/s at the moment using Astraweb, 50meg Virgin line.

Just a thought mate, but try news.virginmedia.com again? I've been in talks with one of the head honchos at Astra this last 24 hours, as apparently the routing between VM and Astra's EU server has been turned off temporarily and they're experiencing issues. VM have acknowledged the issue and are working on it. My speeds were likewise awful (hence the ticket to start with), but Giga and VM's news server are maxing my line. Worth a go!

Did you get sorted with OpenDNS btw, as per the Cable Forum recommendation? I can do you a quick step-by-step for the DIR-615 if not, if you'd find it useful.