Sonic.net

I have a sonic adsl2+ line (2 line bonded) (resold thru Coastwave).

news.sonic.net works fairly well for me, but I do have some issues/questions.

The biggest issue is that I can't get more than 2000000 headers when I download a new group (or update an existing group.) I use Newsbin Pro, but it's not a Newsbin problem. The GROUP command always returns 2000001 as the maximum number of headers available, even though far more are actually downloadable. I'm not sure what's going on.

Here's the NNTP commands:
GROUP alt.binaries.hdtv.x264
211 2000001 1160415116 1162415116 alt.binaries.hdtv.x264

I also have various problem with posts sometimes being temporarily unavailable. Occasionally I will download some and have lots of missing headers. If I re-download it, it's fine!?

I have no problems with news.giganews.com, but I like using the sonic.net local server if it would work better for me.

Guest wrote:The biggest issue is that I can't get more than 2000000 headers when I download a new group

news.sonic.net is a tired old system that has run out of steam when it comes to keeping up with a full usenet feed. As you've noted, it occasionally (regularly) falls behind and we've had to dial back header retention in order to maintain enough free space. Header (overview) retention is significantly shorter than article retention, especially in groups high volume binary groups. As a usenet provider, I assume most users make use of nzb indexing services. It is a substantially more efficient way of moving the bits around.

Technically, as a wholesale subscriber you shouldn't be able to get access to sonic.net's news server.

Guest wrote: Here's the NNTP commands:
GROUP alt.binaries.hdtv.x264
211 2000001 1160415116 1162415116 alt.binaries.hdtv.x264

If I'm reading that output correctly, it's telling you there are 2,000,001 messages, with the oldest being #1,160,415,116 and the newest being #1,162,415,116 (two million posts newer than the oldest). There may well have been 1.16 billion posts to this group since the numbering was last reset, but we only have the last two million of them available at the moment. Supernews appears to have 273,861,371 at the moment. I'm not clear on why refreshing the headers list would suddenly make a multi-part post work for you unless it was still propagating to us when you started grabbing that batch of headers.

Actually the posts are still on your system, but I can't a listing of the headers.

In any case, it sounds like you know of the the issues and I'll have to live with the existing setup. It's basically usable, I just thought it might be be improved.

> I'm not clear on why refreshing the headers list would suddenly make a multi-part post work

I probably wasn't very clear - it's not that I refreshed the headers. I simply re-downloaded the same post and the second time it worked. From the other gentleman's post, I assume it's most likely your usenet server was overloaded the first time I downloaded, and the second download just happened to be at a better time - when the server could respond better.

Thanks.

One final question - I assume that sonic.net prefers the use of news.sonic.net over an outside server (such as news.giganews.net). I thought I was lightening the load on your external connection. If that's a wrong assumption, I can easily change behavior. It's actually a lot less effort on my part to use the outside server.

Guest wrote: One final question - I assume that sonic.net prefers the use of news.sonic.net over an outside server (such as news.giganews.net). I thought I was lightening the load on your external connection. If that's a wrong assumption, I can easily change behavior. It's actually a lot less effort on my part to use the outside server.

Using an outside news server like giganews is probably going to work better for you, especially for binaries.
We don't mind.

Bychance are there any free ones that you'd recommend?

aw wrote:free

Oh, you cad.

Hey, it's what I love the MOST about sonic's server!

For binaries, I use astraweb.com. You can find deals for like $11 a month for unlimited bandwidth and 20 connections if you Google for them with astraweb. That is what I use for my binary downloads. They have excellent retention as well.

Here is a link to their stats: http://www.news.astraweb.com/tools/stats.html

Been with them for like 2 years and never had any downtime either!

I second what Tage says. Astraweb offers excellent value for eleven bucks a month. They have great servers, too. They fill my 36 mbps Sonic.net connection up to the top every time. I understand that they also offer an unadvertised annual rate, if you wish to pay once a year, that lowers the monthly cost down to $8. If you are interested in that, email them and ask about it.