PlusNet boost priority of Usenet traffic

As a PlusNet (Force9) customer, I've just had an email informing me that as
of 1 November they have boosted the priority of Usenet traffic (both from
their own news server and from third-party news servers) from "bronze" to
"silver". By comparison, email and web traffic are "gold" priority.

I've never experienced poor news performance up to now, probably because I
have the 1GB/month PAYG broadband tariff rather than one of the so-called
unlimited ones.

It will be interesting to see whether people who have been experiencing
problems up to now find that things have improved. Perhaps people could post
their experiences.

On Fri, 4 Nov 2005 00:47:33 -0000, "Martin Underwood" <a@b> wrote:

>It will be interesting to see whether people who have been experiencing
>problems up to now find that things have improved. Perhaps people could post
>their experiences.

I don't do binaries or external servers but in my experience over
recent months, even getting headers was ridiculously slow and a simple
text message (such as your original post) would take several seconds
to d/l since they started *prioritising*. Basically, worse than ye
olde dial-up connection virtually all of the time. There appears to
be a significant improvement since the more recent changes but this
only seems to put it back to what it used to be ages ago .. and tbh
the usenet service never was that good in the first place. At least
it is usable now without feeling the overwhelming need to do a John
Cleese on the 'puter while waiting !!

--
Mike
email: mikeb <at> twowheels <dot> plus <dot> com

Martin Underwood wrote

> As a PlusNet (Force9) customer, I've just had an email informing me that as
> of 1 November they have boosted the priority of Usenet traffic (both from
> their own news server and from third-party news servers) from "bronze" to
> "silver". By comparison, email and web traffic are "gold" priority.

Upgrading crappy to shitty?


> I've never experienced poor news performance up to now, probably because I
> have the 1GB/month PAYG broadband tariff rather than one of the so-called
> unlimited ones.
>
> It will be interesting to see whether people who have been experiencing
> problems up to now find that things have improved. Perhaps people could post
> their experiences.
>
>
>

On 04 Nov 2005 09:05, "MikeB" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>At least it is usable now without feeling the overwhelming need to do a John
>Cleese on the 'puter while waiting !!

I've never felt the need to do anything to the computer, but glad to see that
I can download at the full connection speed now from text.usenet.plus.net :-)

[ and that's on the cheapo Plus account, not using Premier here. ]

In article <436aafa5$0$63082$(E-Mail Removed)>,
Martin Underwood <a@b.?> writes
>As a PlusNet (Force9) customer, I've just had an email informing me that as
>of 1 November they have boosted the priority of Usenet traffic (both from
>their own news server and from third-party news servers) from "bronze" to
>"silver". By comparison, email and web traffic are "gold" priority.
>
>I've never experienced poor news performance up to now, probably because I
>have the 1GB/month PAYG broadband tariff rather than one of the so-called
>unlimited ones.
>
It applies to the first 15G of usage to internal or external servers so you
should be well within their limit. Usage over this amount drops your priority
to Bronze for the reminder of the 'calendar month', not sure whether that
means Nov 1 to Dec 1 etc or billing date to billing date.
--
fred
Plusnet - I hope you like vanilla (now with a small squirt of red sauce)

> As a PlusNet (Force9) customer, I've just had an email informing me that
> as
> of 1 November they have boosted the priority of Usenet traffic (both from
> their own news server and from third-party news servers) from "bronze" to
> "silver". By comparison, email and web traffic are "gold" priority.


At Zen I don't have to endure Bronze, Gold, Silver, Off Peak, On Peak, Sups,
Aups, Ellacoya's, Managed profiles, Idle timeout's, Rude incompetent staff,
or other such nonsense, its full unlimited speed on everything, 24/7 the way
broadband should be.

Best move I ever made was to dump Plu$net and there ever changing T&C's.

Worst ISP I ever used in 10 years on the internet.

In article <78d1b$436b4771$52471eba$(E-Mail Removed)>,
(E-Mail Removed) says...


> At Zen I don't have to endure Bronze, Gold, Silver, Off Peak, On Peak, Sups,
> Aups, Ellacoya's, Managed profiles, Idle timeout's, Rude incompetent staff,
> or other such nonsense, its full unlimited speed on everything, 24/7 the way
> broadband should be.

Really? Excellent; and this costs how much, compared to how much you
were paying?

>> At Zen I don't have to endure Bronze, Gold, Silver, Off Peak, On Peak,
>> Sups,
>> Aups, Ellacoya's, Managed profiles, Idle timeout's, Rude incompetent
>> staff,
>> or other such nonsense, its full unlimited speed on everything, 24/7 the
>> way
>> broadband should be.
>
> Really? Excellent; and this costs how much, compared to how much you
> were paying?

Less than £2 more a week, I can easily afford that, in fact, the Zen news
service is plenty good enough for me, so after this month I'll be cancelling
to Eurofeeds and then wont be paying any more than I did to Plu$net whom
made me go seek a third party news service in the first place.

In article <8e0ba$436b6400$52471eba$(E-Mail Removed)>,
(E-Mail Removed) says...


> Less than £2 more a week...

Which package did you move from/to?

> Less than £2 more a week...

Which package did you move from/to?

I honestly cant remember what they called the package on Plu$net? They keep
changing the names of them? I joined them about a year ago after migrating
from Pipex and it was 512, then I paid Plu$net £15 or so to upgrade to 1MB,
around then Plu$net went from OK'ish to rubbish. Migrated over to Zen 1MB
nearly 2 months ago and the difference is astonishing.

No regrets whatsoever.