Slow and inconsistent speeds with Astraweb

[brilman]

I really think you need to try another newsreader, something just doesn't seem right. I'm getting full speeds, with very few incompletes using alt.binz.

yes, think you should try that 1st, I'm not heaving any probs.

[Beck38]

Hi guys,

Sometimes my Usetnet works fine, and others it's like this

Nowhere do you actually list where you are, or what path the data takes to get to you.

P2P is a complete mess, has been for almost 10 years; if you get better, more power to you until you get a knock on your door, your line gets cut, or you become a 'guest' of the local constabulary.

Simple tracing of the route will show you any problems; Astraweb primarily uses LimeLight networks as their main 'feed', and it tends to get overburdened at times around San Jose, where Astraweb is located. If your newsreader supports multi-feeds, put in the EU/Astra server as a secondary, do a tracert on it as well and see what path it takes to get there.

I believe a couple of other folks mentioned this as well.

[blizeH]

Thanks - I did try the european servers, the ssl servers and all sorts of different things.

I've just checked and only a few things I've downloaded actually aren't corrupt in some way (some videos play fine mostly but will have moments where the picture breaks up for a bit until I run quickpar) and generally, to be honest in years I've never had a problem with torrents

Shame there's no a hybrid of torrents and newsgroups, like you pay someone to download stuff from their server instead of P2P, but it uses the torrent technology

[EyeBaller]

Thanks - I did try the european servers, the ssl servers and all sorts of different things.

I've just checked and only a few things I've downloaded actually aren't corrupt in some way (some videos play fine mostly but will have moments where the picture breaks up for a bit until I run quickpar) and generally, to be honest in years I've never had a problem with torrents

Shame there's no a hybrid of torrents and newsgroups, like you pay someone to download stuff from their server instead of P2P, but it uses the torrent technology

The bolded part makes no sense. What are you doing exactly? You download the files, grabit should auto-check the par2 and then repair if needed. Then extract the .avi/.mkv from the rars. And play that file.

Again, if you can't get this to work, try another newsreader. Alt.Binz or sabnzbd is recommended.

[SonsOfLiberty]

or Newsleecher, and Usenet is nothing like Torrents, Usenet has been around since day 1 when the Internet was invented, wiki it.

[blizeH]

Thanks for the replies guys - I think to be honest with that it was my fault, since I tried to extract them using 7zip which doesn't use the PAR files of course.

I think Grabit sometimes extracts files fine, but only if there's an original .rar - with these in particular there wasn't a .rar file, it just started .001 etc so I think Grabit ignored these.

I may have one more go with Alt.Binz and hope it doesn't corrupt everything again. But the last three things I've downloaded wouldn't extract using either Grabit or Quickpar as it said there weren't enough blocks. I'm also ditching Astraweb and will try Hit News

Thanks again

[zot]

Remember that Hitnews only has 200 days retention, Astraweb has nearly 500. (And it's normally just the oldest 20-25% of files on a server that suffer incompletes, so most of the stuff that's incomplete on Astraweb is probably not even carried on Hitnews) But Hitnews/Xennews offers a free (no strings attached) trial, so there's nothing to lose signing up to hunting for missing articles.

Here's something else to consider. First, look at the sizes of all the rar files in the set. Except for the last one, they should all be the same size, and any that are smaller are missing articles. I would try re-downloading the smaller/incomplete rars using the other server. Often one server will have incompletes while the other server will be OK. I've generally found much better completion on the Amsterdam servers compared to the US servers, and this was especially noticeable on older files on Highwinds servers 2 or 3 years ago when they were using UNS's Atlanta server. Often I'd re-downlaod the same rarfile that was incomplete on the US server and it would be complete on the Amsterdam server. (just my experience, maybe others can say the opposite happened with them)

Also, if you'd rather not have to do this manually, many binary grabbers (other than Grabit) can be set up to automatically switch to another server for fills when incompletes are encountered on the primary server. As no single usenet provider is perfect, a good insurance against incompletes is to have an additional block account that feeds from another backend provider, such as www.usenet-news.net (Highwinds backend) or www.Blocknews.net (Readnews backend). [As little as $2 to buy a block of gigs that never expire.] Then if the same files show incomplete on another server, there's a good chance it was a posting problem and the files may be incomplete on every usenet server in the world.

[blizeH]

Thanks dude - the 200 days retention could be a big issue I guess, is it common to download something older than 200 days? I guess so, otherwise Astra would offer it May have to pay the extra and not use Hitnews then, d'oh.

I must say quickly that since using Alt.Binz I haven't had a single problem! IT was Grabit that was the problem it seems, not Astraweb.

Alt.Binz is amazing though, so much better so I'm glad it works okay.

Thanks dude - the 200 days retention could be a big issue I guess, is it common to download something older than 200 days? I guess so, otherwise Astra would offer it May have to pay the extra and not use Hitnews then, d'oh.

I must say quickly that since using Alt.Binz I haven't had a single problem! IT was Grabit that was the problem it seems, not Astraweb.

Alt.Binz is amazing though, so much better so I'm glad it works okay.

[whiteboy]

Yes you are going to very often be downloading stuff much older then 200 days if you use a search site like nzbindex.

Id say around half the stuff I grab is over 200 days old.

[blizeH]

Ah okay, thanks dude - I'll stick with Astra then!

Still having huge problems with my downloads though. Got something here for example, needs another 18 blocks it says, and Alt.Binz wouldn't automatically extract it like some of the others.

Is there anyway either in Quickpar or Alt.binz to fix them? I notice a lot have rar.1 on the end, and are red in Alt.binz...