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

[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. 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 hopefully that clears up your question, just use
SSL, they offer the damn thing for free Everyone should use it, especially heavy downloaders/uploaders

[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/serv...ess-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/serv...ess-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