many downloads incomplete - astranews

[cola]

I wasnt that surprised after Malcontent on the first page was told by astraweb to try different ports. I was a bit skeptical, but shit. I've seen it happen on one other nzb. Still took about a dozen NZBs to find 2 with missing parts, but I think par2 still would have fixed it. I might try some more tomorrow with SuperNZB.

[zot]

I didn't put too much weight in that at the time, since tech support guys can often just shoot back the same standard responses (try SSL, try different ports, etc.) to a lot of different problems, since ports are so often blocked or throttled by ISPs.

But this is something quite unique. I suppose on a newsreader that allows multiple fill-servers, a person could set up a separate server field for every port number, and get near-perfect completion using that string of multiple port numbers.

Seems like the completion issue is more of a software bug than anything else.

[Beck38]

Seems like the completion issue is more of a software bug than anything else.

I think that's pretty obvious. I'm 'fighting' at least three separate problems caused by lax programmers, on things as diverse as Mr. Astraweb, to my computer network, to my media system.

Add to that my 'smartphone', where the vendors doing 'apps' want to be paid not just twice (the paid service the app connects to, and the end user/me) but by the phone manufacturer, and now the phone carrier (four 'streams' of profit) If the manufacturer refuses to 'pony up', they change the code slightly to make sure the app you bought a year or two ago to stop working. If the carrier refuses to pay their kickback, the app simply stops working in it's tracks.

Everybody is getting too greedy. What's going on with Astraweb is particularly troubling, as I know that the s/w they are running is 'home grown', not anything from a s/w development company. So, who they're paying to maintain that s/w is a good question.
For the thing to feed differently according to the port one connects to is beyond bizarre. Major problems.

For several years now, I've been telling folks the story of the last time I spent time living in Silicon Valley (1998-2001); all over the place programmers were getting laid off, and replaced under the H1B visa program with Indians who worked for 1/4th the price (which is illegal, but who was cracking down on it? Nobody). The companies would put up these folks in 1 bedroom apartments, 4-5 per, with a pocket of bus passes to get back and forth to 'work'. Then the dot-com crash. Care to guess what contributed to that?

Now this morning my malware program needed updating, that I just spent a couple days on two weeks ago cleaning up a problem. Now it has the same problem. Don't these folks TEST their product out before releasing it? Huh? Nope. 'My code don't stink' is the typical refrain. Yes it does, now I'll spend another couple days cleaning up after their current mistakes.

[cola]

I finally pulled the plug on astra and jumped on the supernews bandwagon. Retention is pretty much the same, price is slightly better but with a more reliable feed.

[Jackbauer]

I use to have problems all the time with astraweb. Then I got sabnzbd. I tend to download all around the retention sphere, and in the last 6 months have only had 1 failed download (some lazies don't upload any pars...) yet have downloaded over 1.5 terabytes.

Strange that I've never even run into the issue they confirmed... I have sickbeard auto downloading new tv shows yet never have had one of those fail either...

My advice is try a new client like sabnzbd before giving up. And lowering connections can help too

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

[cola]

Clients aren't going to fix server side issues.

[Beck38]

in the last 6 months have only had 1 failed download (some lazies don't upload any pars...) yet have downloaded over 1.5 terabytes.

many folks here do that in less than a week.

Still no change whatsoever on either US or EU servers as of the date/time on this message. As of the coming Monday it will be a full month since Astraweb acknowledged the problems with a 'news' item, and they were advised of the problem by many users at least two weeks previous.

I think that if you can, and it works for you, it's way past time to jump ship, or have a nice large bucket of fill-bits from another provider (like Blocknews).

[Hypatia]

to jump ship

to jump where exactly?

Highwinds? Nope. Hopeless

Supernews? DMCA , one needs a fill account too

Readnews(resellers? Slow speed

it is still the same 2 choices

supernews+ blocknews
astraweb+blocknews

well maybe readnews(ngroups\usenetnow) if you dont have 50+mbit plan
downloading files past xxx days is a pain on a fast connection

[zot]

Also, depending on what you download, it's quite possible that a Blocknews fill account would last much longer on Astraweb right now than on Supernews.

re: jumping ship. ....

Sometimes the only thing that will force a company to correct a problem is if enough people leave. That's obviously not the case here with Astraweb, but I strongly suspect that a mass-exodus might be the ONLY thing likely to get Highwinds to fix its incompletes that exist month after month. That was indeed what it took for Highwinds to finally get serious about Easynews' meltdown 2 years ago, after several months of runarounds and excuses.

It would certainly be helpful if Astraweb at least gave a weekly update, and posted general advice on AW's "system" page. It should not be necessary for every single person to (separately) email support to get answers for a common problem.

And for some reason Steve will post on the Newsbin forum info that never goes up on the Astraweb site.

[cola]

Fill servers are going to be a reality now that DMCAs are being used more frequently. Theres no way around that, unless you're using a dutch provider. I don't know of any dutch providers that have 1000+ days retention though. Its not as though block accounts are that expensive. What would worry me is if blocknews starts having the same DMCA holes as the other big providers.

http://www.supernews.com/super-special/