Usenet unusable on Plusnet

It's just taken me over 2 minutes to pull 550 headers off Plusnet's
newsserver on a 2Meg connection.

Usenet is actually faster through dial-up!

Well get a better ISP then


"Steve" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news(E-Mail Removed)...
> It's just taken me over 2 minutes to pull 550 headers off Plusnet's
> newsserver on a 2Meg connection.
>
> Usenet is actually faster through dial-up!

Steve wrote in
(E-Mail Removed):

> It's just taken me over 2 minutes to pull 550 headers off Plusnet's
> newsserver on a 2Meg connection.
>
> Usenet is actually faster through dial-up!

How strange. My Broadband PAYG service from PlusNet (Force9) is perfectly
usable for downloading email and news, as well as for browsing the web.

As a test, I've reset this group so OE would download the headers again. It
downloaded 1000 headers in about 4 seconds.

That's on a 2 Mbps connection. Force9's speed test has just returned a
result of 1.79 Mbps, which is towards the top end of the range of results I
normally get: I think the best I've seen is about 1.9 Mbps.

"> Usenet is actually faster through dial-up!


very hard to find a decent isp for usent,ive gone through 7 different isps
all of which was crap for usenet, surprisingly freeserve/wannado had the
most groups but speeds where slow,still looking ... currently with f2s but
they dont have a lot of the groups i had before with wannado

ferg

In article <434983f8$0$15046$(E-Mail Removed)>,
Martin Underwood <(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>Steve wrote in
>(E-Mail Removed):
>
>> It's just taken me over 2 minutes to pull 550 headers off Plusnet's
>> newsserver on a 2Meg connection.
>>
>> Usenet is actually faster through dial-up!
>
>How strange. My Broadband PAYG service from PlusNet (Force9) is perfectly
>usable for downloading email and news, as well as for browsing the web.
>
>As a test, I've reset this group so OE would download the headers again. It
>downloaded 1000 headers in about 4 seconds.
>
>That's on a 2 Mbps connection. Force9's speed test has just returned a
>result of 1.79 Mbps, which is towards the top end of the range of results I
>normally get: I think the best I've seen is about 1.9 Mbps.

Yep, they're lying, access to NNTP, either to their servers or premium is
ferked, from my news provider, "Your max throughput is 2.47 KB/sec.", PN
says, "you can download at 142.05 KB/sec. from our servers.", I know who
I believe.
--
fred

In article <dic0ht$e4i$(E-Mail Removed)>, ferg says...
>
> "> Usenet is actually faster through dial-up!
>
>
> very hard to find a decent isp for usent,ive gone through 7 different isps
> all of which was crap for usenet, surprisingly freeserve/wannado had the
> most groups but speeds where slow,still looking ... currently with f2s but
> they dont have a lot of the groups i had before with wannado
>
> ferg

Zen.

End of story.

They in-house their usenet platform and actually spend money and
resources on it. So if you are a bunny chaser or whatever there's really
only one choice. Other in-house offerings are a joke compared to Zen's
service. More proof that you get wot u pay for....

UKOnline/Easynet used to have an excellent binary service but ditched it
altogether. Which was a shame...

FR

fred wrote in
(E-Mail Removed):

> In article <434983f8$0$15046$(E-Mail Removed)>,
> Martin Underwood <(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>> Steve wrote in
>> (E-Mail Removed):
>>
>>> It's just taken me over 2 minutes to pull 550 headers off Plusnet's
>>> newsserver on a 2Meg connection.
>>>
>>> Usenet is actually faster through dial-up!
>>
>> How strange. My Broadband PAYG service from PlusNet (Force9) is
>> perfectly usable for downloading email and news, as well as for
>> browsing the web.
>>
>> As a test, I've reset this group so OE would download the headers
>> again. It downloaded 1000 headers in about 4 seconds.
>>
>> That's on a 2 Mbps connection. Force9's speed test has just returned
>> a result of 1.79 Mbps, which is towards the top end of the range of
>> results I normally get: I think the best I've seen is about 1.9 Mbps.
>
> Yep, they're lying, access to NNTP, either to their servers or
> premium is ferked, from my news provider, "Your max throughput is
> 2.47 KB/sec.", PN says, "you can download at 142.05 KB/sec. from our
> servers.", I know who I believe.

I appreciate that F9's speed test probably measures HTTP access rather than
POP or NNTP access, but my download speed of 1000 headers in 4 seconds is
considerably faster than Steve's speed of 550 headers in 2 minutes. There's
something *very* different between his results and mine. I wonder whether
the problem is confined literally to PlusNet and doesn't affect subsidiaries
such as Force 9?

My experience with F9's email and news is that when they work, they download
fast. Roughly once every 20 newsgroups, I find that OE fails to connect
(immediate failure) or else times out, but I've never had a case where it's
succeeded in connecting but has then downloaded slowly. Similarly with email
(though the failure to connect is rarer - probably once every 50 attempts).

> > very hard to find a decent isp for usent,ive gone through 7 different
isps
> > all of which was crap for usenet, surprisingly freeserve/wannado had the
> > most groups but speeds where slow,still looking ... currently with f2s
but
> > they dont have a lot of the groups i had before with wannado
> >
> > ferg
>
> Zen.
>
> End of story.
>
> They in-house their usenet platform and actually spend money and
> resources on it. So if you are a bunny chaser or whatever there's really
> only one choice. Other in-house offerings are a joke compared to Zen's
> service. More proof that you get wot u pay for....
>
> UKOnline/Easynet used to have an excellent binary service but ditched it
> altogether. Which was a shame...
>
> FR

Isn't the issue here that PlusNet are deliberately crippling *all* port 119
traffic rather than a problem with their NNTP server?

--
Graham.



%Profound_observation%

>
> How strange. My Broadband PAYG service from PlusNet (Force9) is perfectly
> usable for downloading email and news, as well as for browsing the web.
>
> As a test, I've reset this group so OE would download the headers again.
> It downloaded 1000 headers in about 4 seconds.
>
> That's on a 2 Mbps connection. Force9's speed test has just returned a
> result of 1.79 Mbps, which is towards the top end of the range of results
> I normally get: I think the best I've seen is about 1.9 Mbps.
>

Plusnet's traffic shaping for NNTP is different for PAYG than Premier.

PAYG = Silver priority.
Premier = Bronze Priority.

I am also finding Newsgroups to be better on dial-up than Plusnet premier.

woooshuk wrote in
SHg2f.1$(E-Mail Removed):

>> How strange. My Broadband PAYG service from PlusNet (Force9) is
>> perfectly usable for downloading email and news, as well as for
>> browsing the web. As a test, I've reset this group so OE would download
>> the headers
>> again. It downloaded 1000 headers in about 4 seconds.
>>
>> That's on a 2 Mbps connection. Force9's speed test has just returned
>> a result of 1.79 Mbps, which is towards the top end of the range of
>> results I normally get: I think the best I've seen is about 1.9 Mbps.
>>
>
> Plusnet's traffic shaping for NNTP is different for PAYG than Premier.
>
> PAYG = Silver priority.
> Premier = Bronze Priority.
>
> I am also finding Newsgroups to be better on dial-up than Plusnet
> premier.

So premier is *worse* than PAYG? How illogical :-(