Astraweb says "STFU" Giganews! Upgrades To 365 Days!

[SonsOfLiberty]

http://thecasualblogger.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/astraweb.png?w=394&h=75Astraweb says "STFU" Giganews! Upgrades To 365 Days!

Retention: 210+ Days across ALL groups
- Retention is being upgraded to 365 days at the moment.
Keep watching it rise!

Completion: 99%+

Connections: 20 connections (Unlimited Plan)
50 connections (Pay-by-download Plan)

Servers: United States (us.news.astraweb.com)
Europe (europe.news.astraweb.com)



:O



:source: Source: Astraweb (http://www.news.astraweb.com/tools/stats.html)

[mbucari1]

Glad I made the switch!

[Funkin']

This is hilarious. You gotta love Astraweb and how they have been making Giganews look like a joke.

[technobob]

Sweet I just switch to Astraweb when they announced 270 days now with 365 days my $11 is now even more bang for the buck. Giganews is over priced compared to other providers.

[tasker12]

Astraweb rocks the show!

[Tom0102]

OMG, Astra is even better, lol. Can't believe Giga charge so much still

[iLOVENZB]

... and so the retention war begins.

[GaMmERFoLiFe]

can't wait to get Astra going to kick arsh

[asmithz]

:) astraweb is the best

[PanicAcid]

Yup astra own, I got 3 friends from work to move over from Giga, they were paying 3 times as much as me for 20 connections and ssl.

[sm00nie]

Gotta give it to Astraweb for providing awesome retention, SSL, and 20 connections for just $11 p/month!!

Very happy I switched over. I originally switched from giga when Astra upgraded their retention to 270 :)

[duynghia]

Download2Day claims that their retention will be increasing to 400 days, not only 365 days

http://www.download2day.nl/en/Home/

For me, GigaNews is still the best because of the extremely fast download speed and reliable service I've ever enjoyed, what you pay is what you get.

[222MHz]

I still don't think that anything over 365 is entirely useful. I guess you'd want/need the year/s of retention when you first get going with newsgroups, but after you've been up and running for a couple of months you've already found everything from way back and probably stay focused on new content that's being added. On top of all that it seems like over half the stuff I find anyhow is either a repost or a request. So I'll say the price is more important than retention. And currently Astraweb is filling that spot. I'd be just as happy with unlimited 3 month retention for 3.50/mo as I am with where the retention is at for 11. They way I get stuff at least. YMMV.

[Overlord]

Awesome news and awesome title SonsOfLiberty. :D Take that Giganews!

The longer the retention the better for me, I'm always constantly wanting to download HD movies that were released a while back (and aren't reposted nearly as often as SD stuff) and am often times running into the retention issue. There were a couple I wanted to download a couple weeks ago when I was still with Giganews that I should have been able to download but they were too lame to maintain the 240 day retention they said they had.

[Ludvig]

I read something on this board about the "non-standard" SSL provided by Astra.What does it mean ? What are the consequences ? Thank you.

[222MHz]

I read something on this board about the "non-standard" SSL provided by Astra.What does it mean ? What are the consequences ? Thank you.

No clue, never heard anything like that. Perhaps what you read was in reference to the port numbers SSL would use. 443 and 563, which are "non-standard" NNTP port numbers. Standard would be 119. Your traffic would be look like regular https aside from who you were connected to.

I did notice sometime within the last couple weeks or so, they changed the secure host to ssl.astraweb.com from secure.us.astraweb.com I had my client configured to use secure.us.astraweb.com:563 and didn't notice any ill effects.

[rokie]

giganews sucks and they do not offer non-expiry blocks accounts. astraweb FTW!

[SonsOfLiberty]

I read something on this board about the "non-standard" SSL provided by Astra.What does it mean ? What are the consequences ? Thank you.


If you use SSL, only you and your "news provider" know what you uploading....if you use standard connection, anyone can see what your uploading/downloading :dry: hopefully that clears up your question, just use
SSL, they offer the damn thing for free :naughty: Everyone should use it, especially heavy downloaders/uploaders :whistling

[NewsgroupRev]

I read something on this board about the "non-standard" SSL provided by Astra.What does it mean ? What are the consequences ? Thank you.

Port 563 is the default port for NNTP over SSL. Alternate ports allow you to avoid port-based speed limitations imposed by some ISP's. Several Usenet providers allow use of port 443 which is the standard https port.

Here is a list of news server adresses and alternate ports for services including Astraweb:
http://www.newsgroupreviews.com/server-address-ports.html

[SonsOfLiberty]

I read something on this board about the "non-standard" SSL provided by Astra.What does it mean ? What are the consequences ? Thank you.

Port 563 is the default port for NNTP over SSL. Alternate ports allow you to avoid port-based speed limitations imposed by some ISP's. Several Usenet providers allow use of port 443 which is the standard https port.

Here is a list of news server adresses and alternate ports for services including Astraweb:
http://www.newsgroupreviews.com/server-address-ports.html


He's asking what the difference is, connecting to non-SSL and SSL connections, which I clearly explained in the last post (above post) I just made :frusty:

[Ludvig]

Many thanks for your help (And sorry for the delay).

[zot]

I read something on this board about the "non-standard" SSL provided by Astra.What does it mean ? What are the consequences ? Thank you.
Astraweb has developed (using an open, published standard) a new NNTP extension called "XZVER"

from Astraweb's site:

For news reader authors: To download compressed headers.

We have recently introduced two new commands at the server level which require news reader authors to implement in order to take advantage of the faster header downloads.
By extending the NNTP protocol and incorporating header compression directly into the server with support from news readers, you will not need to run any additional, complicated proxy style applications (accelerators). You won't need to worry about configuring proxies/accelerators to bypass firewalls.

Some advantages you will notice by using compressed headers:
- You download less data as it is all compressed. This is a big bonus for those with ISPs that have monthly data caps.
- Your downloads finish faster, giving a perceived header download speed increase between 5-15 times faster.

https://helpdesk.astraweb.com/index.php?_m=news&_a=viewnews&newsid=9

The advantage of XZVER compared to standard ZLIB compression is that in XZVER only the headers are compressed, not the (already compressed rar-file) article bodies. This saves resources because the computer/server is not being forced to compress/decompress uncompressible material.

So far only Newsbin Pro and Usenet Explorer support the XZVER server extension, but Newsleecher plans to add it in the next v.4.0 release.

[SonsOfLiberty]

Retention Capacity Upgrade to 365 Days

Astraweb is pleased to announce that we have just completed an infrastructure upgrade to increase our retention storage to 365 days.

Currently our server storage capacity stands at 365 days.

Our retention is currently growing daily towards 365 days. The latest retention statistics as well as our retention capacity is available at:

http://www.news.astraweb.com/tools/stats.html

Our retention growth is for ALL groups. Our retention growth also includes headers, unlike many other services that do not include headers as part of their retention growth.

Astraweb is committed to providing the best value service!

[Beenieman]

I'm thinking of switching over, my only concern is what speeds can I expect? I currently can max out my 50meg Virginmedia connection on giganews, can I expect the same with astraweb and what are they like for completion?

Thanks in Advance

[SonsOfLiberty]

You should be able to max it, they have servers in Europe. I max mine out and you can get 20 connections and unlimited. From what I've read here at FST and other places they max there's out as well.