There once were lots of Newsproviders. As Usenet grew comanies could not keep up with the complexity and eventually sold out to larger rivals. I think it is time for Astraweb to throw in the towel. While I would personally hate losing an independent backbone, it appears that Astraweb can no longer run a competitive service. Anyone else come to the same conclusion?
(_8(I)
No.
More companies = more competition for pricing. I don't care how bad the alternatives are, there is nothing worse than little to no selection. As you've already stated, were there was once many, there are now few.
However, I don't think complexity has had much to do with it at all, rather DMCA issues have forced many to obtain content elsewhere.
yo
I take your point on the effect of pricing and the marketplace. I was the referring to the file corruption problems at Astraweb which Beck38 has well documented not DMCA removal as the reason that Astraweb needs new management. DMCA effects everybody but the weekly Sunday night slowdowns and corruption problems are unique to Astraweb.Originally Posted by Skiz
A review of past server upgrades at Astraweb, and what other plants (Giga, Block, and others) did around the same period of time.
When Usenet began exponential explosion some 5+ years ago, all plants were up against the wall because of one basic issue: the mount of 'space' they had given to the (unique) ID to each data blocks. I can't remember how many digits, or what the original space was from 'back in the day', when it was figured that Usenet would never get so large, but it was something like 1^256 (probably larger) but by the early 21st century they were running out (kinda like TCP/IPv4 IP Addresses).
Most of the server plants fully upgraded their systems to first, re-ID all their current libraries, and get all new 'stuff' on the expanded ID system (I believe the new(er) systems could have enough unique ID's to ID all the atoms in the known universe, of something like that).
What Astraweb did at the time was not to completely overhaul their systems to new s/w, but to use some sort of programming 'trick' to allow them to expand their capability without the expense of a new s/w. I believe that's what they're running on now, and it's a good possibility why they seem to have so much trouble (next to their competitors).
I may be completely wrong in all of this, but it seems to be a good possibility, as I've never seen a press release in the past x years saying that Astra had upgraded their s/w, only that they continue to add more storage space and expand their storage (into the foreseeable future).
So anyone who would want to buy them up would most probably have a goodly amount of work to do bringing the two plants (US and EU) up to snuff. Highwinds, for instance, developed their own Usenet s/w package that (I presume) is what they run on all their plants, and have upgraded the ones they have bought, to it. Giganews is proud of having 'in house' programmers that have developed their own s/w and that's what they run. Blocknews is a good question, I don't see any info on their site as to if they have switched (to Highwinds), ran Highwinds to begin with, or what they are running now.
All I can say is that both Giganews and Blocknews are extremely stable operations, and I'd have to go back at least 10 years to find any wobble in their operations; I know when the ID problems first surfaced years ago, Giganews was ready for it and the switchover was pretty quick and without problems.
I think I'll look back and refresh my memory on the RFC's and such, but I think this is all basically correct off the top of my head.
Some of it was still there; the last change to the ID format was in 2009 under RFC 5536, and I think (again, at the time) that Astra couldn't completely come up to that, and implemented a s/w patch to come into compliance but meant that they had to do some kind of 'translation' between the Usenet unique ID and the ID system used in their plant (at least the way I remember it).
Who knows if that is part of the puzzle as to why all the 'gaps' and 'fades' they have experience since, but it seem somewhat logical it is part of the problem, simply because if one goes back to articles that pre-dated this time (2009), one finds that they are 100% (no block errors whatsoever).
Of course, this may be all hyperbole, akin to MH370. But hey, it's been 20+ years since I actually had any hands-on in operating a Usenet server, so it's like asking me my technical opinion on Win10 when the last MS OS I had accreditation on was Win2K.
Last edited by Beck38; 07-29-2015 at 11:01 PM.
Interesting Point. My thoughts is if Highwinds or Giga were to buy Astraweb, then they would mainly be buying the customer list and would migrate the customers over to their servers. The old astraweb equipment would just be sold off used. That is what happened when Highwinds bought Randori or Giganews bought Airnews.
But those were really small plants with, compared to Astraweb, a small customer base. It isn't the hardware the Astras has that is the 'problem', I figure, but the software running it. All those drives and the slots holding them are still pretty new, unless they want to re-purpose it all.
Moving that customer base to a plant which would (presumably) have better connectivity than San Jose (in the case of Astra/US) or just down the street (or the same building, in the case of Astra/EU) is a big maybe (I had actually run a team installing telecom equipment in the very building that Giganews is at in L.A. about 18 years ago when the building was brand new), and I did tons of fiber all over San Jose/Santa Clara in the same time period.
Poster
Only enemies of usenet and usenet users would suggest that Highwinds should buy AW....Highwinds? Ru serious? These thugs?
BTw why anti-monopoly laws are not applied to Highwinds??Why were they allowed to buy so many providers?
Well true but say what you will highwinds and giganews are just as evil but neither one would treat the service and its users like astraweb handles things. Highwinds only buys who is willing to sell so both parties would-be just as guilty.
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