Is Astraweb better than Tweak/Bucket combined?

I paid $19.23 total for 3 months of Tweak and Usenetbucket. Although Tweak is highwinds now, I still am able to grab more from it than Bucket. Combined they are working very well and its been a while since I had an incomplete download. I would like to get my monthly costs down a little but I'm also considering going up to the $15/2 months offer from Astraweb. I max out around 2.2 MB/s with my Tweak/Bucket combo. Would Astraweb be much faster? Would posts last longer on Astra before being taken down?

What is your ISP connection rated at? Astraweb should be faster and I haven't had problem with take downs for the past year but I guess it all depends on what your trying to grab.

When I do a speedtest I get around 55 mbps. Each of my accounts is capped at 10 mbps so I've got a lot more bandwidth I could use.

But it seems like there's always complaining about Astraweb.

I download most stuff at 11MB. When I had VPS it could achieve 50+MB but it was a bit different situation coz the server was in the Netherlands data center.
However, you should check routes to their servers (tracert command) so that you could see how many hops are between ur ISP and their servers

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Originally Posted by cardboardbox

When I do a speedtest I get around 55 mbps. Each of my accounts is capped at 10 mbps so I've got a lot more bandwidth I could use.

But it seems like there's always complaining about Astraweb.

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Astraweb gives you 20 connections for the $15/2 months package and you should easily be able to max your internet connection.Only problem is slow downs sometimes at nights and like Sunday nights.

To get things way down you could do frugal Usenet plus an astraweb block for stuff over their retention. Only really works well if you download lots under 300/days though but if you do the monthly cost can't be beat.

I'm getting a fair few incomplete grabs off astraweb lately, frustrating to say the least. Have to say it's only on older grabs but even then only talking few weeks old !!

Will be looking around for a new provider once my current sub runs out.

I am now in a similar predicament. Looking to move away from Astraweb and Tweak has now changed for the worse from what I hear. I guess years of doing the same thing was bound to run dry. Any other thoughts on Bucket or others?

Up until a few weeks ago when I left Tweak, it was still very good. Bucket is awful. Maybe not quite highwinds awful but very close.

This provider is quite good if you are not looking for extreme retention/speed (+-900 days) : www.smsusenet.nl
Wait for them to activate the summer rate "Zomer Piek: 20Mbit/Dal: 30Mbit". For EUR 25 you can get 1600 credits. This will last you 165 days (+- EUR 4.5 a month). To keep the same rate make sure you buy more credit before your 165 days has ended. You can pay with PayPal.

It's getting quite spotty. Worth a shot i guess.

Astra is sucking of late. US servers are better than EU still.

However they are not as "pro-active" on take-downs as they used to be but that is clearly still an issue for any provider. Speeds have also dropped from the usual 65mpbs (8/MB) as well but I am not really in that much of a rush


I am going to stay with my unlim $96/year account for now, I have fill account and it doesn`t get hit much,

Agree, Astraweb has got pretty bad last 3-4 weeks really quick takedowns have started again!
Was the reason i left in the first place came back about 8 months ago and was all good, till recently, won't be renewing when my 2 month sub is up!
Which is very soon :sad1:

I have astra for speed and use a tweak block account to fill the gaps. Works well, but the tweak block account is getting used up faster and faster of late... I can max out astra over SSL at 110mbps, where on tweak it maxes out at about 28mbps here in Canada.

Agree with pretty much everyone else - tweak was my fallback from astra, but is picking up more than its fair share of Tue slack at the moment. Don't intend to renew next month with astra unless something changes dramatically ...

*the* slack, even ...

Astra's been really good for me, very fast, few take downs that I've seen. I'm using blocknews as a fill server but you'd think with all the stuff I've grabbed that is over a day old that it would already be gone from blocknews and thus unable to fill in what Astra is missing.

Went back to astra, tweak sucks big time now. Time will tell if this was a good move or not.

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Originally Posted by MrBogus

Went back to astra, tweak sucks big time now. Time will tell if this was a good move or not.

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I guess Tweak finally was completely integrated into highwinds. For a long time it was still doing fine even after they were bought out by HW.

Currently using bucket and find the speed superior to tweak, however take downs are fast have seen stuff go within about 6 hours given the US / UK time differences for the previous evening television. Haven't had any issues with completion though and its mainly TV show that causes a problem.

That said I did just buy a whole years subscription with them as it averaged out at just over £2 per month for unlimited 40 meg. Will probably get a block account with another provider just to fill the holes.