'Zero Day' Hasn't Budged, Probably won't for 'Forever'

Since GN doesn't have block accounts (so long ago I can't remember when they dropped having them), I still have a very low $3/month account they don't sell anymore (greedy b*sta*ds), but I guess they have let me keep it. Unfortunately, if I ever pull it up (I did so a couple of times after switching to Astra just to get some things that were too corrupt elsewhere, but that was well over a year ago), I really keep it simply to 'check' propagation.

I guess I could use it for posting, but I have a very old block account with Astra that can't be traced to me whatsoever (bought with untraceable Visa gift card some 8+ years ago) and my traffic goes through a randomized VPN, so...

Anyway, back in the day (2 years ago) when my speed was slower than dirt (768K DSL that actually topped out around 600Kb/s) such 'fades' really gritted my teeth. When my DSL provider took a hike, I switched to the only competition, and both the VPN and a much better uploader was necessary. I did around 500GB of testing, with the various PowerPost types, and fairly quickly figured out that they were 'not up to the task' unless I wanted to continue to track these 'fades' but at a much faster (6-7x) rate.

Yikes. No. Every once in awhile I'll 'see' a skip, very very small. But right now, I'm going about 12 weeks without anything, during which time I've transferred better than 2TB. Bloody Good.

It would appear that my timing seemed to be the biggest issue when testing Jbinup initially with Astraweb. The more I test it, the happier I am with it. I'd have to say my initial problems were MOSTLY with AW (as well as SSL).

Tonight (okay, say around 0300GMT) I started my weekly upload 'routine', to find that AstrawebUS was quite literally dragging. So much so I did a Speedtest to San Jose, CA., which told me that the entire path was just peachy.

Hmmm. So, I let it grind away a bit (a half-hour or so) and things settled down (or, I should say settled UP speed wise). Things happen, and I first think about my ISP (cable), and the path, but Speedtest quickly dispelled that, Of course, anything can happen at all during the 'night' as long as things don't completely come apart (it did once some 6 months ago, both my posting machine and another did a 'reboot', of course wasn't a power thing as everything is on a nice large UPS....)

But at least it came right back up to speed tonight, and hopefully it'll stay there. I know folks here tend to go ding-dongs when things get wacky, and to a bit so do I. That's why JBinUp has been a bit of a godsend, locking down that upload path. I'm kinda surprised that another type of block checking uploader hasn't come out of the woodwork, particularly with the jaw-dropping speeds that are available around the world (particularly in both Europe/Britain and the Far East/Japan/Korea).

Well I wouldn't call it a godsend. I haven't quite figured out if it is a propagation issue yet, but I'm still getting missing parts on the download end (when I'm checking), even though header checking and auto indexers are telling me it's OK. When I try to repost those parts manually, it's kind of hard to force jbinup to get started. I have to force stop and start over and over again before it does anything.

When I did my initial testing, the one 'wobbliness' that JBinUp exhibited (at least for me) was in trying to post to servers that were very far away from me, either my hop count (tracert) or by ms delay (ping). but as I needed to use a VPN to encrypt/hide my traffic, I simply choose a port on the VPN network as close as possible to the server I wanted to post to.

That is actually reverse from what is 'normally' suggested by the VPN folks, they want your port to be as close as possible to you; but I quickly found out that for usenet, the reverse worked perfectly. As Astraweb/US is, in San Jose/Santa Clara CA, a stones throw away (and some 6 hops) from the VPN plant in SanFran, my tracert to Astraweb is 8 hops total, with a ping delay averaging <50ms. So, it's quite literally as if it's 'right next door', as if I still lived back in Alameda County (on the north east side of the bay).

Those were the 'good old days', late 90's, making an almost obscene amount of money (apartment and home prices were also 'obscene', but had full-duplex T1's in every unit!), and gas prices were 'already' at $4 a gallon (! GD California!). That and when the dot.com's started to fail left and right, one didn't know if the company one was doing contract work for would exist the next day or week.... Fun times!

Anyway, I tried Giganews (server in Virginia/DC Suburbs) and a couple others, but it seemed as soon as that hop count/delay ramped up, JBinUp would get 'squirrely'. Even tried Astraweb/EU (Amsterdam) but the trans-Atlantic hop was too much for it. So, you might take a look at your actual connection, and see if it's got a really tight 'lock' with the posting server from your location.

It would be nice if most text newsreaders had Jbinup's post-checking features. It's frustrating to write out a long post, only to have it disappear into the ether when posted to the NNTP server. :)

I assume that the reason why VPNs would be recommended to be physically located close to the person using them is to reduce the length of unencrypted traffic. I've noticed though, that encrypted traffic seems to have a harder time being transferred through the internet, maybe because encryption tends to clog up deep-packet inspection servers, or whatever the case, but encrypted traffic is often slower. I hate it that some DPI-using ISPS lump all encrypted traffic in the 'p2p' category and severely throttle it.


In the late '90s crude oil dipped to under $10/barrel, so something must have been seriously screwed up in California if gasoline was $4/gal -- it was under $1 in other states (and much of that was taxes).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zot

I assume that the reason why VPNs would be recommended to be physically located close to the person using them is to reduce the length of unencrypted traffic.

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Actually not; the traffic is encrypted either from the originating PC or from the encryption box; I use both methodologies, as the encryption box is extremely stable but a bit slow, maxing out around 5+Mb/s but covering my entire network at once (and my upstream speed limit) but doing it on a machine level (multi-core) easily swamps my receive level (22Mb/x).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zot

In the late '90s crude oil dipped to under $10/barrel, so something must have been seriously screwed up in California if gasoline was $4/gal -- it was under $1 in other states (and much of that was taxes).

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You have to remember that California is, when it comes to energy, another country (NOT the US). The gasoline/oil formulations are very different (smog), and require highly specialized refineries. This is why the crooks at Enron targeted it when doing their 'trades' and such; that and a goodly percentage of the electricity comes from the Pacific NW (Columbia River, Federal Bonneville Power Administration) so they had to 'buy off' the Republican FERC Federal Regulators, which was proven long ago by the Public Utility District that serves me today (phone taps) when we had a Democratic state AG.

We have a Republican AG today who refuses to press charges (although the evidence was collected many years ago), although some of that material was used to convict and send to Costa Rica the Enron crooks. This is just like around the country where folks voted these guys in on a 'jobs' platform (or in this case a 'law and order' platform) only to find out that they had a different agenda to pursue once they actually got elected (other states, spend all their time blocking abortion, going after teacher unions and such), but here it's not going after the real criminals, because they're 'politically connected'.

The current 'spike' in gas prices today is a minor 'bump' in prices in California, especially around the SF area. That's why when you see stories on the national news the pain is in rural mid-west areas, not really in Cal. even though the commute is usually terrible. The same thing with home prices, although we're supposed to be in a 'double-dip' in that, the prices were so artificially high to begin with that only minor reductions have taken pace during this recession.

I count myself very lucky in that I sold my home in 2003 when I took very early retirement, bought a duplex (rental rates have continued to go up during the recession), and I still can (eventually) retire to the coast if I choose in a couple more years.

Of course, we could have a nice earthquake, which would throw a wrench into that plan (!)