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

[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....wnews&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.