Holiday specials from Blocknews/Usenetnow

Saw this on another forum and thought people here might be interested in it:

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Without further "ado", since I don't think it has been done before, figured we would try bringing "Black Friday" / "Cyber Monday" chaos to Usenet.

Late Thursday night just after midnight this page will become active for purchases: »usenetnow.net/holidays.html

$8.99 per month as long as subscription remains active.

In Black Friday fashion, deals are usually limited by inventory or time frames, so this is being limited to the first 400 sign ups OR until 11 AM eastern time that morning.

At that same link, beginning Cyber Monday morning through the rest of the holidays:

$48 every 6 months; this was popular since many folks didnt want to pay a whole year in advance.

For those block users among us, 500 GBs for $51 is up now, through the rest of the holidays: »blocknews.net/holidays.html

Happy Holidays to everyone, whatever it is you may celebrate!

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Many thanks - perfect timing, I was looking for a new block account so very much appreciated.

Cheers, PT

Awesome! Id take it if I wasnt with Supernews.. Might switch though.. Hmm.. good price.. I havent researched UseNetNow though.. Any good?

Usenetnow resells service from a place called Readnews http://readnews.com/

Can't say that I have used any other resellers of that service. I've personally been with Astraweb for almost 18 months. Just thought it was a good deal and people might like to know about it.

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Originally Posted by unoriginal

Usenetnow resells service from a place called Readnews

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Usenetnow dropped Readnews earlier this year, I think it now uses Highwinds as its backend server.

No, I'm pretty sure that they used to resell Highwinds and dropped them to move to Readnews.

A traceroute to news.usenetnow.net gives me this:

2 dist1-vlan50.sndg02.pbi.net (63.200.206.130) 6.461 ms 5.808 ms 6.451 ms
3 151.164.94.2 (151.164.94.2) 6.192 ms 6.464 ms 5.951 ms
4 ex1-p14-1.eqlaca.sbcglobal.net (151.164.39.157) 11.636 ms 10.970 ms 42.153 ms
5 ae0-301.cr1.lax1.us.nlayer.net (69.31.127.49) 11.645 ms 10.962 ms 11.377 ms
6 te1-3.ar1.iah1.us.nlayer.net (69.22.142.121) 66.337 ms 78.720 ms 80.115 ms
7 xe-2-2-0.cr1.atl1.us.nlayer.net (69.22.142.118) 75.173 ms 75.797 ms 74.878 ms
8 xe-0-1-0.cr2.iad1.us.nlayer.net (69.22.142.106) 126.865 ms 74.913 ms 74.402 ms
9 111.xe-2-3-0.cr2.iad1.us.scnet.net (216.246.102.210) 74.716 ms 74.993 ms 74.313 ms
10 54.tge3-4.ar1.iad1.us.scnet.net (216.246.102.106) 75.242 ms 74.713 ms 74.943 ms
11 as6450.960.tge4-2.ar1.iad1.us.scnet.net (205.234.224.82) 74.979 ms 75.385 ms 74.938 ms
12 newsfarm-us.blocknews.net (198.186.190.234) 74.899 ms 75.282 ms 74.948 ms

Not a hint of HWNG.net anywhere.

Newsdemon, who sells Highwinds, shows me:
7 UNS-LLC-HIGHWIND-NETWORK-GROUP.TenGigabitEthernet3-3.ar5.ATL1.gblx.net (67.17.197.166) 82.065 ms 77.232 ms 76.855 ms
8 2-1.r2.dc.hwng.net (69.16.191.125) 75.699 ms 75.657 ms 75.906 ms
9 ve1006.ar2.dc.hwng.net (69.16.190.126) 75.184 ms 75.911 ms 75.950 ms
10 69.16.186.122 (69.16.186.122) 75.413 ms 75.410 ms 75.382 ms
11 209.197.15.237 (209.197.15.237) 76.111 ms 75.782 ms 75.686 ms

And you can see it drop down into Highwinds network. Usenetnow doesn't do this.

I think Usenetnow/Blocknews is using their own frontend. The tracert ends at newsfarm-us.blocknews.net and we know that Usenetnow/Blocknews is a reseller, so that's not the final destination -- it stops short of the real IP address of the serverfarm. Retention can often give a clue to who the back-end provider really is. Back in summer 2008, Highwinds retention was only 100 days, and other backend providers like news-service.com, Astraweb, and Readnews were advertising retention of around 150 or 160 days. So UsenetNow was obviously not using Highwinds then, since they were claiming 50% more retention than Highwinds had. Today however, Readnews claims 200 days retention, Highwinds over twice that. Usenetnow/Blocknews claim retention that is close to Highwinds retenton. (the website possibly a month outdated) A better test would be to look at a NNTP usenet post and read the header ID, it contains the full routing trace (all the NNTP servers a post/article passes through from being posted to being read), and everything posted on Highwinds servers - regardless of reseller involved - has the same format unique to Highwinds (for instance, your username is encrypted in the routing string - and no other provider does this). I'm fairly sure that using a different front-end server would not change this "fingerprint" of a Highwinds-backend-server post.

I did check out the headers, back in May. Someone else even confirmed that they were seeing Readnews as well.

http://filesharingtalk.com/vb3/f-gen...-dealio-350932

This is really about as far as I'm going to hash it out as I don't have service with Usenetnow so this doesn't even affect me. If you want to go straight to the source and ask, the guy that runs the service posts at dslreports.com under the name Swintec. I'm sure he would be happy to tell you who he resells.

I was wrong speculating about Blocknews currently being a Highwinds reseller, they are definitely using Readnews as their backend these days, as confirmed by the NNTP posting headers.

It's been a bit confusing because BlockNews/UsenetNow has recently changed its backend provider - and possibly more than once.

Is it possible to buy personal usenet acccess from readnews?
It says $7.50/month, 300GB monthly cap

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Originally Posted by beansis

Is it possible to buy personal usenet acccess from readnews?
It says $7.50/month, 300GB monthly cap

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The readnews.com site says that the company only sells wholesale. The site also says that the price that they charge ISPs/resellers is $7.50/month per 1 megabit/sec port.