I'm looking for a new ISP and want to make sure that Sonic will meet my needs and not give me the problems my current ISP has.
I assume based on Sonic's background that Usenet support will be good, but in a nutshell, what can I expect in terms of newsgroup availability, speed, retention, and so forth? I'm not a high volume user but I'd like things to be there within reason.
A problem I'm having is that my ISP stopped offering an SMTP server of its own. They switched to Gmail. I have nothing against Gmail, but when they had their own SMTP server my email went out unchanged. When I changed my SMTP settings to Gmail, nobody told me that their server would be changing my From address to an email address with my ISPs domain. Months later I found out by accident that I had a bunch of email that I never got, sent to an email address I never use and an account I never check.
All I use it for is personal email, with addresses at my own domains, and perhaps I send a few dozen emails a month at most. I tend to give businesses unique email addresses to contact me at, so I can cut them off if they spam me. My only real issue is being able to reply to incoming email with the correct From address.
Based on the help pages, it looks like SMTP, IMAP, and so forth will not be a problem, but I want to make sure. I also want to know if I can expect any issues with restricted ports, throttling, or anything that doesn't give me full access to what I expect as a typical (in terms of everyday Internet activity) user.
I assume based on Sonic's background that Usenet support will be good, but in a nutshell, what can I expect in terms of newsgroup availability, speed, retention, and so forth? I'm not a high volume user but I'd like things to be there within reason.
A problem I'm having is that my ISP stopped offering an SMTP server of its own. They switched to Gmail. I have nothing against Gmail, but when they had their own SMTP server my email went out unchanged. When I changed my SMTP settings to Gmail, nobody told me that their server would be changing my From address to an email address with my ISPs domain. Months later I found out by accident that I had a bunch of email that I never got, sent to an email address I never use and an account I never check.
All I use it for is personal email, with addresses at my own domains, and perhaps I send a few dozen emails a month at most. I tend to give businesses unique email addresses to contact me at, so I can cut them off if they spam me. My only real issue is being able to reply to incoming email with the correct From address.
Based on the help pages, it looks like SMTP, IMAP, and so forth will not be a problem, but I want to make sure. I also want to know if I can expect any issues with restricted ports, throttling, or anything that doesn't give me full access to what I expect as a typical (in terms of everyday Internet activity) user.