Giganews a bit Wobbly,Upgrading?

Don't know if anyone else noticed, but there was a couple of postings this weekend that, although they were 'verified' as complete by Newzbin (and I went to Binsearch to verify as well), that were missing tons of parts of Giganews.

I eventually kinda gave up, as usually I don't 'jump' on things right away, but these were high on my 'get ' list. I looked around to Astraweb and a couple of other servers, and the parts were all there (have very old block accounts still active, so can get headers easily enough).

This GN variable parts availability I've run into before, when I complained to GN, got the usual "we have no problems" response, although the missing bits were very rampant on their system. A few days layter, they would be 'filled in'.

I think I'm, along with lots of other GN users, looking VERY close at their operation, paying top dollar for sometimes variable service, and I think it's because of the way they upgrade their storage systems.

Oh well, it's just a time waster, to find out in the morning that the d/l you had running all night spent most of the time accomplishing... nothing.

Hmm. Thats a bummer.. Had a difficult decision to make earlier this month on whether to go with Giganews or another newsgroup, glad I strayed away from them.

-Mutantx

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Originally Posted by Mutantx

Hmm. Thats a bummer.. Had a difficult decision to make earlier this month on whether to go with Giganews or another newsgroup, glad I strayed away from them.

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Thing of it is, it's been a very long time since I used, for instance, AstraWeb, enough to not know that they don't occasionally do the same thing today. I made the plunge for Giganews about 3+ years ago when I simply got tired of chasing after fills.

99% of the time, it's great, if a bit steep coin wise. But like I said, every once in a while... Unfortunately, the 'try it' periods (free or nearly free) on others isn't enough to really know (over time) that it's any better. Maybe I'll simply have to, if I've really got a burr in my saddle, is to watch them REAL close the next time I see even a small blip with Giganews.

Well, it's been going on for a couple of days now, think I'll send a note to GN, but I know beforehand what the response will be...

I've yet to have any problems with incompletes unless the poster fucked it up or something. I download 350+GB each month but maybe I download the "right" stuff :P

Volume is over 5 TB per day, this weekend first time ever.

Giganews has been perfectly fine for me, except when I download old crap and Newsbin decides to not grab a part or fail it and make me search for another posting with that part...I haven't had any trouble, I think it's the posters not Giganews.

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Originally Posted by Beck38

Don't know if anyone else noticed, but there was a couple of postings this weekend that, although they were 'verified' as complete by Newzbin (and I went to Binsearch to verify as well), that were missing tons of parts of Giganews.

I eventually kinda gave up, as usually I don't 'jump' on things right away, but these were high on my 'get ' list. I looked around to Astraweb and a couple of other servers, and the parts were all there (have very old block accounts still active, so can get headers easily enough).

This GN variable parts availability I've run into before, when I complained to GN, got the usual "we have no problems" response, although the missing bits were very rampant on their system. A few days layter, they would be 'filled in'.

I think I'm, along with lots of other GN users, looking VERY close at their operation, paying top dollar for sometimes variable service, and I think it's because of the way they upgrade their storage systems.

Oh well, it's just a time waster, to find out in the morning that the d/l you had running all night spent most of the time accomplishing... nothing.

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i agree. most definitely something wrong with giganews. inconsistent since newyears. not too happy. moving to astraweb soon. will keep giganews as fill server. all will be well. happy newyear.

I think you guys are just getting bad posts, I've downloaded over 5GB today alone and all have been fine.

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Originally Posted by SonsOfLiberty

I think you guys are just getting bad posts, I've downloaded over 5GB today alone and all have been fine.

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Uh... nope. Maybe it's the particular newsgroups you're in.

Thought it was doing better today, then massive 'skips'. The ng's are a.b.dvd.classic.movies, a.b.dvd9, and a couple of others. I just got some stuff off a.b.dvd.criterion, and it went just fine.

So it appears to be ng specific. BTW, I did get the usual 'we have nothing wrong, no other users are complaining' return on my email. Typical. But then again, I think folks simply jump ship ('churn') on their account, and as they appear not to be doing any proactive maintenance on their systems (from what it appears), then who knows.

BTW, since I use News Rover and it has built in Giganews database searching, this afternoon one a d/l I was trying to start up, brought up the parts and tried d/l'ing some of it.

No Go. The server is reporting it has all the parts, but when you try to d/l them, 'message not found'. So the database is reporting it has the part, then reports it missing.

That's.... really not good! :sick:

I still think it's NOT Giganews, I've download 5TB since my last post and not a single problem, besides slowing down and I just re-booted my router and max speed again, and no problems, and that's from alot of groups downloading.

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Originally Posted by SonsOfLiberty

I still think it's NOT Giganews, I've download 5TB since my last post and not a single problem, besides slowing down and I just re-booted my router and max speed again, and no problems, and that's from alot of groups downloading.

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No, it's Giganews, verified with several other folks on different boards, and it is Newsgroup specific.

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Originally Posted by Beck38

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Originally Posted by SonsOfLiberty

I still think it's NOT Giganews, I've download 5TB since my last post and not a single problem, besides slowing down and I just re-booted my router and max speed again, and no problems, and that's from alot of groups downloading.

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No, it's Giganews, verified with several other folks on different boards, and it is Newsgroup specific.

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yep

Sit down while you read this:

"Thank you for your patience while we looked into this for you. This issue should now be resolved.

Thanks again and please let us know if you have any further problems.

--
James
Giganews Support"

Yep. Things do seem to be running better today, no gaps on either 'new' stuff or the usual backlog of nzb's I have a machine grinding away on.

Will of course keep a close eye on things; the bandwidth I have (fairly low but okay) means that it's bad when that machine grinds away all night long getting 'message not found'.

But it does make me, like some others here, think about saving the $15/month and going with Astraweb, for one. I'll continue to think about it. ;)

Well Giganews should up their retention rate soon, and prices "should" drop some, not much but some, from the info I'm reading.

on their website it say their rentention is going to be under 240days until they upgrade their hardware again

But, if you read, they have an unxplained growth in their servide and said "they will be upgrading VERY soon".

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Originally Posted by SonsOfLiberty

But, if you read, they have an unxplained growth in their servide and said "they will be upgrading VERY soon".

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yea i know i meant to say until they finish upgrading

BTW, while all this was going on (the skips and such) I took a hard look at actual retention, going back and seeing just exactly how much it actually is on at least one newsgroup, a.b.dvd9.

Just shy of 180 days. And it's not even close to the really heavy traffic ng's like a.b.dvd, a.b.dvdr, or even a.b.dvd.classic.movies.

As I now have at least one 'hard' datapoint, I'll keep an eye on it, see if the retention gets any better. Maybe I'll look back at something from one of the larger ng's, as I save all the d/l'ed nzb's I do (why? because... I'm a pack rat!).

180 sounds bad

I'm downloading things that are 213 days old :)

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Originally Posted by SonsOfLiberty

I'm downloading things that are 213 days old :)

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And you apparently don't realize that EACH newsgroup is a separate entity, both in the usenet realm and the disc space it takes up on the server...??? Tell us which group that is, apparently the Giganews folks have decided that it's more important than other groups for retention.

BTW, Giganews is still skipping parts, parts that Astraweb (just to drop a name) isn't.

a.b.multimedia
a.b.tvseries
a.b.movies.divx
a.b.boneless

More?

Besides I just told you that I'm downloading post that are over 200 days old from various groups, so that answer's your question, sounds like the groups in question have drive questions and/or could be Giganews is upgrading or having server issues.

I'm not stupid....... just grabbed season 1,2,3 of BSG from there and the Scifi one too, and they were all over 200 days.

I'm sure I can dig into Newsbin's log info and grab more if I still have the data...I only failed one file and it dropped 1 .rar file out 256 .rar files. The post was merely 90 days old.

Don't forget Giganews is upgrading too...so take that into consideration. It's most likely the 'cause.

Possible (the upgrading), but I've come to the conclusion is poor peering.

I used one of my old 'techniques' from back at the dawn of time (1994 or so, when I ran a usenet server plant), posting a test message on another server and seeing how long it took to propagate to Giganews.

Since I still have some leftover bits (for fills) from before I went with GN 3+ years ago, on around 3-4 servers out there, I simply sent a small message from each one of them, and then waited until it showed up on GN.

Uh.... out of the 4 messages I sent (from Astraweb, Usenet-News, and two others), five days ago, the only one to get through was from Astraweb. The message(s) came through just fine to the others (i.e., sent from Usenet-News, got 1 min. later on Astraweb). Sill waiting on GN.

I think 5 days lag time means something is wrong with the peering, not the storage.

So, I'm taking this 'opportunity' to start the process of moving to Astraweb. Their plant seems MUCH more stable, and what, I'll save %14/month? Sounds good to me. As an additional bonus, from me to the Astraweb server is only 10 hops, with an avg. delay of some 120ms, vrs. GN at 22 hops, and >300ms delay.

The Astraweb figures are very much like GN 'was' 3 years ago, when they were located in Phoenix; now that they are in the tech corridor around Hearndon, VA, the bits have to crawl across the entire continent.

So, I'll see if those test messages EVER get into GN. At 5+ days now, I doubt it. I've already sent a couple more, one of them got there, the other is like the first, 'lost in usenet space'.

Astraweb's offer won't last long, and then it goes back to normal and GN is already discussing a price drop, ya'll be mad when you switch and then GN becomes cheaper...ya ever try the 'FREE' IPv6 newsgroups? They have 100 day rentition and it's free.

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Originally Posted by SonsOfLiberty

Astraweb's offer won't last long, and then it goes back to normal and GN is already discussing a price drop, ya'll be mad when you switch and then GN becomes cheaper...ya ever try the 'FREE' IPv6 newsgroups? They have 100 day rentition and it's free.

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which ipv6 newsserver are you talking about ?
only one i know of is eweka.nl

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Originally Posted by SonsOfLiberty

Astraweb's offer won't last long, and then it goes back to normal and GN is already discussing a price drop, ya'll be mad when you switch and then GN becomes cheaper..

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WRONG. The $11 price (as listed here) is FOREVER, a LOCKED IN PRICE as long as you maintain the account. So GN will have to drop a LONG ways to compete, and then you'll still have problems with them.

I'll drop my GN account down to 2G/month level (a couple bucks a month) for a couple months when I drop it down, simply to see if they do get any better, or get worse. Then I'll 'plug and abandon' the account.

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Originally Posted by Beck38

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Originally Posted by SonsOfLiberty

Astraweb's offer won't last long, and then it goes back to normal and GN is already discussing a price drop, ya'll be mad when you switch and then GN becomes cheaper..

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WRONG. The $11 price (as listed here) is FOREVER, a LOCKED IN PRICE as long as you maintain the account. So GN will have to drop a LONG ways to compete, and then you'll still have problems with them.

I'll drop my GN account down to 2G/month level (a couple bucks a month) for a couple months when I drop it down, simply to see if they do get any better, or get worse. Then I'll 'plug and abandon' the account.

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So you paying for 2 accoutns?

eweka.nl yes. and xsnews.nl I think there are others.

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Originally Posted by SonsOfLiberty

Astraweb's offer won't last long, and then it goes back to normal and GN is already discussing a price drop, ya'll be mad when you switch and then GN becomes cheaper...ya ever try the 'FREE' IPv6 newsgroups? They have 100 day rentition and it's free.

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Originally Posted by Beck38

WRONG. The $11 price (as listed here) is FOREVER, a LOCKED IN PRICE as long as you maintain the account. So GN will have to drop a LONG ways to compete, and then you'll still have problems with them.

I'll drop my GN account down to 2G/month level (a couple bucks a month) for a couple months when I drop it down, simply to see if they do get any better, or get worse. Then I'll 'plug and abandon' the account.

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The sign up for the Astraweb is limited, we don't know when they'll pull the chance to sign up for the $11 a month offer. But those who are signed up, have it for life.

I don't know why you'd be mad to switch to Astraweb then switch back if GN drop their price, it's a little inconvenient but not that big a deal...

The 3gb/month GN acct only has 30 days retention.. which is ok if you just want to use it to check for peering, but not if you want to be able to get fills... (I'm sure you knew that already Beck38 :))

I really like Giga that's all, never failed me, the price is kind of the break point though, so Astraweb looks like a good alternative, but from user comments it seems there both great but giga is expensive.

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Originally Posted by EyeBaller

I don't know why you'd be mad to switch to Astraweb then switch back if GN drop their price, it's a little inconvenient but not that big a deal...

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For years and years, I had a nice account with a bay area company that worked out fine, until these massive dvd postings started eating up retention space. Then I had the multiple block accounts chasing fills and such, got to be a real drag....

So I 'bit the bullet' and paid GN the $25/month, starting a bit over 3 years ago. Didn't look back.

Then, about 6-8 months ago, I started getting 'message not found' errors on nzb's that were d/l'ed from Newzbin; now, I simply went back to the Newzbin entry, and saw that, according to them, all the files/parts had been verified. Hmmm.

So, I went a took a look at some of those old block accounts, and lo and behold, the 'missing' GN parts were there! I d/l'ed a few to make absolutely sure, and yep, they were, my newsreader wasn't lying to me.

Then, the problems slowly went away... took a couple days, but those missing parts on GN 'showed up'.

This has happend about 1-2 times a month ever since, This last time, I was blithely going along, minding my own business, keeping my d/l'ing around 400MB/month, when yet again, tons of 'message not found'.

Well, it's pure aggravation. Aggravation, I might add, I'm paying a (ever increasing) premium price for.

So, tonight, I did some tests with Astraweb, and found that their throughput (with those 20 connections) is just about 2-3 times faster than Giganews is. The three times faster ms ping times, and half the route hops, REALLY makes them faster rather than the 3500 miles cross country trip to Giganews.

So, yes, I'll keep the Giganews account as it is for a week or so, before tearing it down. I'll stomp on the hammer on Astraweb and see how it goes.

Not read all of this but I have found propagation slow on text NG's recently after posting.

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Originally Posted by Windy72

Not read all of this but I have found propagation slow on text NG's recently after posting.

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I really think it has something to do with their peering, which would directly affect the propagation.

I'd spend some time going further researching the problem (I ran a usenet server plant 1994-96), but I've given the Giganew folks my considered opinion, for what's it's worth. The return emails have been basically 'canned' responses.

As I pointed out in an earlier posting on this thread, I've seen this going on for around 8+ months, comes and goes. This time has been just about the worst. When I first tripped across it this time (several days ago), there were massive 'skips' on a binary group, that, as of today, those parts are STILL not on their server.

But are on every other server I have access to (3-5). I've started moving over to Astraweb, it'll probably take a couple weeks to really test and make up my final mind; the $15/month savings, if Astraweb has no probs (and so far, throughput is 3-4 times FASTER than Giganews, due to them being much closer 'internet wise' to my location) will enter in to it.

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Originally Posted by Beck38

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Originally Posted by Windy72

Not read all of this but I have found propagation slow on text NG's recently after posting.

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I really think it has something to do with their peering, which would directly affect the propagation.

I'd spend some time going further researching the problem (I ran a usenet server plant 1994-96), but I've given the Giganew folks my considered opinion, for what's it's worth. The return emails have been basically 'canned' responses.

As I pointed out in an earlier posting on this thread, I've seen this going on for around 8+ months, comes and goes. This time has been just about the worst. When I first tripped across it this time (several days ago), there were massive 'skips' on a binary group, that, as of today, those parts are STILL not on their server.

But are on every other server I have access to (3-5). I've started moving over to Astraweb, it'll probably take a couple weeks to really test and make up my final mind; the $15/month savings, if Astraweb has no probs (and so far, throughput is 3-4 times FASTER than Giganews, due to them being much closer 'internet wise' to my location) will enter in to it.

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I've had no problem in my few months of uploading and downloading, but were probably not using the same groups, and I'm switching to Astraweb, the price is too good to pass up, I might loose my retention for awhile, but I can live with that. The servers are the same distance for me, so I'll still be middle ground, but I much rather pay alot cheaper than more expensive, and SSL is free through Astraweb if I read it right.

Hi to all,
to cut the story short I need HELP with my nzb files. You are my last hope?
I currently subscribe to giganews, i use newsbin and grabit. I repair with Quickpar and winrar. The problem i have is that when i have downloaded my files and try to extract in auto or manuall I get the winrar diag box saying my files are corrupt or in-complete. I run quickpar and it says missing blocks. My music files are know problem but when I download a game or film I constantly get the same error messages. I have tried differant newsgroups, newsreaders and a usenet but I still get the same faults. I amd
not the best with pcs and i have spent days trying to figure out what's going wrong the kids have forgotten what i look like and the Mrs hates me! PLEASE HELP before I go mad! With Hope Wilk007

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Originally Posted by wilk007

Hi to all,
to cut the story short I need HELP with my nzb files. You are my last hope?
I currently subscribe to giganews, i use newsbin and grabit. I repair with Quickpar and winrar. The problem i have is that when i have downloaded my files and try to extract in auto or manuall I get the winrar diag box saying my files are corrupt or in-complete. I run quickpar and it says missing blocks. My music files are know problem but when I download a game or film I constantly get the same error messages. I have tried differant newsgroups, newsreaders and a usenet but I still get the same faults. I amd
not the best with pcs and i have spent days trying to figure out what's going wrong the kids have forgotten what i look like and the Mrs hates me! PLEASE HELP before I go mad! With Hope Wilk007

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you need to hit the repair button when its done reporting how many blocks are missing

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Originally Posted by dutchmaster420

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Originally Posted by wilk007

Hi to all,
to cut the story short I need HELP with my nzb files. You are my last hope?
I currently subscribe to giganews, i use newsbin and grabit. I repair with Quickpar and winrar. The problem i have is that when i have downloaded my files and try to extract in auto or manuall I get the winrar diag box saying my files are corrupt or in-complete. I run quickpar and it says missing blocks. My music files are know problem but when I download a game or film I constantly get the same error messages. I have tried differant newsgroups, newsreaders and a usenet but I still get the same faults. I amd
not the best with pcs and i have spent days trying to figure out what's going wrong the kids have forgotten what i look like and the Mrs hates me! PLEASE HELP before I go mad! With Hope Wilk007

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you need to hit the repair button when its done reporting how many blocks are missing

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1) give me an estimation of how many blocks are missing, & how many there should be in total

2) give me an idea how old the posts you are downloading are ?

im having the same problem..just started a couple of weeks ago...when i run it thru newsleecher repair n extract it shows up like ,size 14/648kb, 35/40 status broken, 37/40 status broken all the way down..only 1 was status healthy...please help me as im paying $14 a month.

What were you downloading exactly? What is the release name?

Finish download the par sets, Newsleecher will pause them, un pasue them download and should repair itself.

In the repair part make sure you have, enabled, repair,extract, and monitor boxes all ticked....restart and then let it repair the files.