Astraweb problems again

[pinhead1000]

i use both and they both fail for me im using altbinz i must be doing something wrong somewhere?

[Beck38]

Possibly, but I've never used 'altbinz' so don't know how it's set up. You DO use nzbcc to check the nzb beforehand? Other than that, you may send/post the nzb (pm if need be) and I'll check it out on the various servers.

If it seems to be everything (figuring that 'everything' isn't 'nothing but p0rn') you may look at where the posting is originating from, and perhaps what the poster is using to post it. If, for instance, the postings are all or mostly originating from a particular server plant, that may be the problem; but if they are originating from one of the Astra plants, that may narrow things down a bit, but nzbcc would help tell if it's your s/w or setup that may be at fault.

[pinhead1000]

cheers beck never used nzbcc will look into that first no its not porn m8 films and tv series that i grab

[Hypatia]

'Astra/EU' when you say 'astraweb'

Most files ~20-30 days old fail on both servers. I dunno what is the exact affected range though, I haven't bothered checking, I just don't have time for this. I dunno what happened but apparently it's one of their infamous screws ups as in a large amount of random missing articles throughout a certain range of retention.Generally ~10% of data is missing.

Tbh I'm thinking of switching to usenetserver for downloading stuff (yeah, yeah I know, it's highwinds, but their speed is fine, their completion atm is better than SN\GN's and especially astraweb's even with all dmca takedowns and there is simply no alternative with the same retention.) and upload as usual via my second AW block account.

[Beck38]

Most files ~20-30 days old fail on both servers. I dunno what is the exact affected range though, I haven't bothered checking, I just don't have time for this

I kinda do, and I haven't run into any 'gaps' in the last 30+ days or so, including all my usual hyper checking of posted 'stuff'. I usually take a couple of days a week to load up on downloads, the age of most are fairly 'new' (1-3 weeks or so) and didn't run into any gaps or missing parts whatsoever in my 'run' of last week (zero repairs). All were in the BD25-50 range of sizes, 25-50GB each (total around 500GB) so if something was seriously amiss I would have thought I'd have run into it.

That and like I said, I take an almost anal review of what I've posted (through Astra/US) particularly that from 1-8 weeks old, so any large gaps and such would be instantly noticeable, and only the 'usual' 1% drop-off in Astra/EU v. Astra/US is there, whereas both Giga/US-EU and Blocknews/US-EU are virtually 100% as is usual for them.

Will continue as usual my 'routine', but I simply haven't seen any large gaps appear lately.

[Hypatia]

Check Efnet uploads (movies\teevee series ~20 days old) for instance.

erotica will do too. You can start from the top of the page.

Just an example:
gush.b720p
blocknews - 100% completion
AW US - 221 articles missing

or, say, welcome to sweden web-dl

Welcome.To.Sweden.S01E01.Day.One.720p.WEB-DL.DD5.1.H.264-Coo7

AW US -350+ articles missing
blocknews us - 100% completion
Everything is severely broken

[pinhead1000]

try this beck ive tried on both us and eu servers and both fail for me Ghost.Stalkers.S01E06.Farrar.School.720p.HDTV.x264-DHD see if you can get it to work as mine wont repair or d/l with out major missing data

ive tried that nzbcc but it just keeps giving me an error Article[[email protected]] not found on server and all different file names but the same not found on server any ideas becks thats with the above file

[justlooking]

i use both and they both fail for me im using altbinz i must be doing something wrong somewhere?

Maybe I'm crazy, but I think many of the incompletes are because of the newsreader. Altbinz doesn't seem to be able to handle multi-server downloads very well, and my friend has to use the Astra European server in Newsleecher to get something that was incomplete in Altbinz despite using both servers.

[Beck38]

Some Preliminary Results:

Yes, Astra/US appears to have developed some 'soft spots' (or maybe a 'soft range' is more a more appropriate term) in it's retention. In doing an A/B on known 'good' (i.e. nzb's that were posted (and checked multiple times) in the same dates as those folks supplied above.

BUT... (and one can disagree with me on this)

All those nzb's were posted with, IMHO, far fewer par's than they should have been. I follow a regime that takes into account the complete size of the files protected, according to the following amount of included pars:

Size > 25GB (BD25) - 10% minimum
Size ~8GB (DVD5) to 25GB - 20% minimum
Size ~4GB (<DVD5) - 30-40% minimum
Size ~2GB - 50% minimum
Size ~1GB and lower - 100% minimum

The largest nzb given above is 'gush' and it has the typical 5% pars (4GB size), which is WAY too little. The next is 'ghost stalkers' at a bit better 10%, but with only a size of 1.3GB it needs a LOT more as well. The 'welcome to sweden' has a fair amount, but at under 800MB it needs a lot more that a paltry 30% pars.

Now yes, if usenet worked 100%, 100% of the time, then little if any pars would be needed. And yes, Astra/US (I'll assume that Astra/EU may be doing worse) is falling off the rails a bit, but not laying on it's side quite yet.

Putting more pars into a posting takes only a few extra minutes of generation, and the same in posting, but if one actually wants their work to last beyond a few days, or only on a few servers, then one needs to take the time and effort (we're only talking about machine time here, it's not as if it's taking that out of one's rear end).

So yes, Astra needs to be better. Put in a ticket and see what that gets you. Or you can give up and 'pay the man' over at Giganews/Blocknews, and they have eventual problems as well here and there and over time.

But bottom line is, and this is something I've been harping on, for just about forever, more pars never hurt anyone.

Meanwhile, I'll take a look at some historical data and see where the fade gap starts and ends, will take a day or so.

[Beck38]

Some more information:

Usually (like every other time some gaps have been found and noted) they start at x and go to y with several weeks or months between. Not this time.

The first gap starts about one week back. Goes for about two months back (at this point from the first week in December to about the first week in October), then things look fine for about 3-4 weeks, then another drop-off for x weeks/months.

The gaps aren't large drop-offs, just down into the 90-85% completion range, with some slight hints down to the 65-75% range upon occasion.

So in the case of the three nzb's that folks are having problems with, they are all within those gap ranges and don't have enough pars to recover. But obviously, it should be working better; however, I'm sure that once again the folks running the plants simply can't see the forest for the trees.

I'll continue to monitor this situation, and maybe things will improve at some point.