List of Usenet Clients that support fill-servers

[zot]

Due to the completion problems that exist with Astraweb at this moment (as well as every major service provider to varying degrees) setting up a block account as a secondary "fill" server to automatically catch the primary server's missing parts has become a necessity. But sadly, most newsreaders and NZB clients with multi-server capability DO NOT support a fill-server arrangement.

So I thought I'd put together a list of usenet clients with fill-server capability:


Free Software:

Altbinz v0.25
Binary News Reaper (BNR2/BNR3)
Ninan
NNTPGrab
NZB-O-Matic
SABnzbd


Comercial Software:

Newsbin v6 (v5 splits bandwidth between servers)
Newsleecher
Newsreactor
Usenet Explorer
(possibly others)


Linux

HellaNZB
Pan
URD? (will confirm later)


Fill-server support may not always be apparent, as some newsreaders may - without indicating it in any way - automatically try every server in the list whenever the first server has a missing article. (NZB-O-Matic works this way)

Conversely, many others that support multiple servers typically do not allow combining servers sequencially on the same article if the first server comes up short. (Grabit comes to mind regarding this 'non-feature').

I think I've probably covered all the free software, but I'm open to any suggestions/corrections.

[Hypatia]

zot where do u set fill server in Usenet explorer?
Is it "preference" for a server in servers window?

[zot]

Yes, UE calls its server priority setting "preference" - just as every client, it seems, has its own unique name for it

[Funkin']

Is Hella still abandoned?

[hdjunky]

It is nice to see Newsbin got there shit together for this type of setup. They always had it really ass backwards and made it seem like there way was the best.

[mfalaura]

Thanks for the list ! I've tried NNTPGrab from the free software list and Newsbin from the commercial . I'll write a review about it, soon

[sapa50]

Hella is abandoned

[Funkin']

^ That's too bad. I was hoping somebody else would pick it up. This was my favorite client for quite a while. I really liked having using a client from Terminal. It was super light.

Any other clients similar to Hella?

[zot]

Hella is abandoned

Free, open-source projects can never really get "abandoned" - they can only go dormant.

I've never understood people's obsession with software release dates. To me, if a program does everything I need it to do, then it makes absolutely no difference how old it might be. (and in many cases, older versions of software can be outright superior)

Although NNTP is an ancient format, there have been a few advances in binary usenet clients in recent years. These include features such as:

NZBs
SSL
RSS
multi-connections
auto-Rar/auto-Par
fill servers
streaming media player
compressed headers
memory caching
(future feature) download headers using multiple connections

Some of these features can be performed by installing additional software, such as using Stunnel for SSL and compression.

I'd probably have to say that support for NZBs and multiple connections forms the basis of all modern binary clients. But other than that, I would have to rate fill-server support as the most necessary feature, since it can make all the difference between getting a file ... or not getting a file.

^ That's too bad. I was hoping somebody else would pick it up. This was my favorite client for quite a while. I really liked having using a client from Terminal. It was super light.

Any other clients similar to Hella?

Thanks for reminding me.

There is also Nget, an open-source, command-line Linux client. Nget also supports fill-servers -- but not multi-thread downloading.

Like Hellanzb, Nget could probably be classified as dormant (or even "abandoned") - but like I said earlier, if a software release does everything you need it to do, what difference does it make when it was released?

[heiska]

^ That's too bad. I was hoping somebody else would pick it up. This was my favorite client for quite a while. I really liked having using a client from Terminal. It was super light.

Any other clients similar to Hella?

NZBGet.