What's so bad about Highwinds?

[siryak]

It has been great for me. *shrug* Actually I am getting better speeds with fewer connections than I was with Readnews.

[Beck38]

I tend to 'monitor' most of the 'biggies', i.e., GN, Astra, and Usenet-News. and all of them tend to suffer 'gaps' or 'fades' in certain groups now and again. But over the last couple of years, I'd say that Usenet-News/Highwinds is the worst, and particularly their EU server (although their US sometimes isn't much better).

I tend to think it's simply poor monitoring by the 'staff', in most/all cases.

[Malcontent]

I But over the last couple of years, I'd say that Usenet-News/Highwinds is the worst, and particularly their EU server (although their US sometimes isn't much better).

I tend to think it's simply poor monitoring by the 'staff', in most/all cases.

Usenet-News dumped Highwinds several weeks ago and they now resell "Readnews" usenet service. Which is a big improvement in my opinion.

[Beck38]

If so, I just saw them (usenet-news) take a HUGE dump to their database. Since I'm 'old school' and troll through the headers, just about a days worth all of a sudden 'disappeared' when I did an update this evening.

And yes, they do 'resolve' to readnews. Shows how out of touch I am with them, I only use it for 'fills'.

[nntpjunkie]

I tend to 'monitor' most of the 'biggies', i.e., GN, Astra, and Usenet-News. and all of them tend to suffer 'gaps' or 'fades' in certain groups now and again. But over the last couple of years, I'd say that Usenet-News/Highwinds is the worst, and particularly their EU server (although their US sometimes isn't much better).

Usenet-News was never considered a biggie by anyone....no offense. IMHO the Highwinds network is solid - true this was not so true two years ago during the retention wars, but today the usenet is an entirely different scene. I use Usenetserver right now and have no issues with content ~730 days old. There is no issue if you prefer to browse for content via headers - although with all the indexing sites available today, using headers is border lined retarded As an actual user who uses the service today, I can say that Usenetserver is a solid provider with excellent retention and completion, heck they suffer less DMCA takedowns than Giganews. If it was not for the fact that Astraweb has issues with up to the minute content uploads I might have used them for the decent price. That's my two cents...

[jefffisher]

i'm the last person to complain but newshosting which is i believe highwinds i am getting files as little as 300 days old or less downloading so corrupted it's not even repairable with par2's, it's pretty consistent as well i have had to turn to torrents over ten times in the past week. the retention goes upto 600+ days but with many files unreliable it's pointless.

[tesco]

i'm the last person to complain but newshosting which is i believe highwinds i am getting files as little as 300 days old or less downloading so corrupted it's not even repairable with par2's, it's pretty consistent as well i have had to turn to torrents over ten times in the past week. the retention goes upto 600+ days but with many files unreliable it's pointless.

That's exactly the issue I had with newsdemon.
Files over 300 days were really hit and miss. With giganews I don't generally have any problem up to 800 days.

[nntpjunkie]

It's been smooth sailing with usenetserver for over a year now, no real issues other than the occasional DMCA takedown , but giganews has more takedowns than any other provider lately so that's not really a surprise...

[MrMoneybags]

I had NewsDemon for a while. This was about 6 months ago and I had their $11/unlimited plus plan, with like 650 day retention and unlimited downloads. Let me say that so often a 450 day old post was so incomplete that PARs couldn't even save it. I didn't even bother trying to download anything older than a 500 day old file due to its horrific retention. It was absolutely HORRIBLE. I never felt confident that a file would fully complete.

I switched to Astraweb and I haven't looked back. I've downloaded files 825 days old with VERY few incomplete parts, and I've downloaded 825 day files that are 100%. I'm not saying Astraweb is perfect but I've downloaded a lot and I've never had an issue with a file up to Astraweb's advertised retention not finish, though that does include PAR help.

[siryak]

IMO the best thing to do is get Highwinds/Astraweb/Supernews whatever floats your boat and couple that with a Blocknews account. Although it is having some speed issues as of late, Readnews still has the best reliability for completes of anybody. So you get the best of both worlds. You get speed from the 3 I listed and the Blocknews account can fill in any gaps.