Tiscali NNTP failure?

Something odd has been happening.

I have a Tiscali account, used essentially as an internet access with
such things as Gmail and news.individual.net as the mail and NNTP
servers rather than Tiscali's own.

Last night, Monday 8th January, NNTP access was dead. It didn't matter
which software I used, even telnet to port 119, there was no response.
Not from Tiscali's news server and not from news.individual net.

Web browsing worked fine, including the news.individual.net web pages.

It is possible that I have been hit by Tiscali's Fair Use Policy--I do
occasionally download large, paid-for, software packages--but I haven't
received any of the warning emails referred to, and the document makes
no mention of NNTP and Usenet.

Has anyone else had a similar problem with Tiscali, particularly last
night? That is, a total failure of connections to port 119, both to
Tiscali's advertised Usenet server and to news servers elsewhere on the
net.

I have raised this with Tiscali. I anticipate the usual email about how
to configure Outlook Express.


--
David G. Bell -- SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.

"I am Number Two," said Penfold. "You are Number Six."

Updating...

On Tuesday, in article
<(E-Mail Removed)>
(E-Mail Removed) "David G. Bell" wrote:

> Something odd has been happening.
>
> I have a Tiscali account, used essentially as an internet access with
> such things as Gmail and news.individual.net as the mail and NNTP
> servers rather than Tiscali's own.
>
> Last night, Monday 8th January, NNTP access was dead. It didn't matter
> which software I used, even telnet to port 119, there was no response.
> Not from Tiscali's news server and not from news.individual net.

Since the news service reappeared without any changes made at this end,
the Tiscali helpdesk person seems to think this has "resolved" the
problem.

> Has anyone else had a similar problem with Tiscali, particularly last
> night? That is, a total failure of connections to port 119, both to
> Tiscali's advertised Usenet server and to news servers elsewhere on the
> net.
>
> I have raised this with Tiscali. I anticipate the usual email about how
> to configure Outlook Express.

And, yes, they did tell me how to configure Outlook Express so as to
read news.

As of the creation time of this article, NNTP access seems to be
disappearing at what the published Fair Use Policy would describe as
peak times. Whether is gets posted in the next few hours, I don't know.

Since this affects Tiscali's own news server, as well as external
servers, it doesn't seem to be much to do with external bandwidth. And
the Tiscali server doesn't seem to carry binaries newsgroups.

I suspect an ill-managed attempt to deal with people using NNTP servers
for large files--binaries of enormous size--associated with a badly
informed helpdesk. Which is a pity. In the past, their helpdesk staff
have seemed competent. If this were a known, time-related, barrier, I
could always set up some sort of automatic connection to run either side
of the blocked period.

I also suspect that the Fair Use Policy published on the Tiscali UK
website has only a slight connection with reality.

--
David G. Bell -- SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.

"I am Number Two," said Penfold. "You are Number Six."