A little newsgroups help

I've been using my ISP's(Verizon) newsgroups free access. And I use GrabIt to download. Well, the problem is that most of the stuff I want to download, won't actually download.

I get an error message in GrabIt that says: alt.binaries.boneless do not exist on this server.

So it's very, very, hard for me to find files that will actually download. What does this error message actually mean? Because I get this same message with every file that won't download.

I know that free newsgroups suck, but I was hoping to at least download some files at least.

Thanks for any info.

It means just that alt.binaries.boneless do not exist on this server.

Anything you try to download that was posted in boneless will fail because it does not exist on verizons usenet server. The same for anything else that is in a certain group and grabit displays that error for.

Your best bet if you want to use usenet to its full potential is to pay for access through a provider such as giganews, usenetserver, newshosting or the like.

Ok. So if I upgrade to a service like Giganews, then I'll more than likely never get that error again? I'll be able to download anything that I want?

Also...for now while I'm still using Verizon, is there anyway that I can tell the file I'm wanting to download, will actually download? That file isn't in boneless, or is in a particular groub that verizon allows?

Thanks for the info. You've been a lot of help.

It's also possible that you tried to download a file that was older than the server's retention limit.

The First thing you need to do is find out exactly what retention Verizon has in each group they carry that you want to download a file from. Like most ISPs's in-house* newsgroup server, Verizon's binary retention will vary from group to group.

While the binary retention of a typical pay-server will be several months, the retention of in-house* ISP servers will generally be only a few days. For instance, you might get 10 days retention on small MP3 groups, and 1 or 2 days retention on the big dump groups like a.b.boneless and a.b.nl. Many ISPs don't even carry the big binary groups like a.b.boneless because they're so huge.

One easy way to learn the group availability/server retention is to first download the group list to find out which groups are available, then fetch all the headers for each group you are interested in, then look at the date of the oldest header.


* in-house servers are those owned by the ISP. However, more and more ISPs are outsourcing their Usenet to large independent Usenet providers like Giganews, Supernews, or Highwinds, and these will offer very long retention, but will have download limits - either a bandwidth throttle or a monthly download quota.

Thank you zot. I really appreciate the info, but since I'm so new to this, a lot of that was foreign to me.

One easy way to learn the group availability/server retention is to first download the group list to find out which groups are available, then fetch all the headers for each group you are interested in, then look at the date of the oldest header.

How exactly do I do that? Do I do that within GrabIt?

Thank you.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Annoyed

Thank you zot. I really appreciate the info, but since I'm so new to this, a lot of that was foreign to me.

One easy way to learn the group availability/server retention is to first download the group list to find out which groups are available, then fetch all the headers for each group you are interested in, then look at the date of the oldest header.

How exactly do I do that? Do I do that within GrabIt?

Thank you.

---

Press the sort by date button. Retention on AT&T servers is about 24 hours I would guess. I would think its safe to assume that Verizon uses the same newsgroups, so its probably about the same.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Annoyed

Ok. So if I upgrade to a service like Giganews, then I'll more than likely never get that error again? I'll be able to download anything that I want?

Also...for now while I'm still using Verizon, is there anyway that I can tell the file I'm wanting to download, will actually download? That file isn't in boneless, or is in a particular groub that verizon allows?

Thanks for the info. You've been a lot of help.

---

Never had any problems with Giganews... Been a customer for over 2 years and they have never failed me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Annoyed

Thank you zot. I really appreciate the info, but since I'm so new to this, a lot of that was foreign to me.

One easy way to learn the group availability/server retention is to first download the group list to find out which groups are available, then fetch all the headers for each group you are interested in, then look at the date of the oldest header.

How exactly do I do that? Do I do that within GrabIt?

Thank you.

---

Put in "grabit" and "tutorial" in a search engine. Among the results was :

http://www.binaries4all.com/grabit/headers.php

Thank you Zot. Someone pm'd me some other links too, so I have a lot to look over. I'm hoping to leave bittorrent behind for good and just stick with newsgroups.

Although, one thing I think I need to keep is a dedicated music torrent site. I don't know if newsgroups has as much music as some of these private torrent music sites.

Thanks.

EDIT: Ok, that tutorial did really good. There are a TON of groups that I get once I hit Update Groups. Is there any groups that people would recommend? Like alt.binaries.boneless. That was the shown in the tutorial.

Annoyed,

Verizon has a 7 day retention date. I also have it. It basically means if you don't DL w/in the first 7 days of something being posted, Verizon won't be able to get it for you.

I went with Giganews (after mistakenly going with NewsDemon) and I'm happy as can be. It has 200 day retention and you pretty much can get everything that is out there.