Astrraweb/US going 'off the rails' again with massive skips/incompletes

[Beck38]

Started to notice this about 12 hours ago; I had just finished getting something over 2 years old (no errors whatsoever) and did a quick check on something a bit less than a month old, and saw massive incompletes (it was 100% a couple weeks ago).

Will be checking the EU server shortly, but in going back 2-3 months it appears that the US server is 'falling on it's face' once again. A ticket has been launched at their site, and I'll continue to check/re-check things to figure out where the 'gap' is in their US plant.

So if you're trying to get something off AstraUS in the next few days, be advised. Hopefully, the EU server is running okay, but will take a few hours to confirm that (and anyone who uses US as their primary should have the EU set up as their first secondary anyway).

UPDATE: The EU server appears to be fine; again, if you're using the US as primary and EU as secondary, you'll be grabbing a whole bunch of parts off the EU. IF it's the other way around (EU as primary US as secondary) good luck getting anything good out of the US.

UPDATE2: In going more in-depth, things are disintegrating more, the number of 'skips' is increasing, almost doubling over the last 24 hours

UPDATE3: It looks like the affected 'region' is about from some 3-4 weeks ago to around 6 months previous (~1 Oct 2013); I'm doing some 'deep analysis' the next over the next 12 hours or so, should be able to nail it at that time.

[freelance86]

ive noticed for the past 12 hours that im getting a shitload of 502 errors (1 hour good, 1 hour bad, 1 hour good, 1 hour bad etc etc), cant really tell if its packet loss through my isp or astraweb so ill just blame astraweb for now... everything im getting is complete so i dont know if they are related or not, however im grabbing stuff thats 2-3 years old.

edit: using astraweb us ssl.

[bikertyke]

I moved from Astra nearly a year ago. Service became very poor. I moved to Usenetnow and never looked back. Hardly any bad blocks on anything.

[007av]

I'll join the party, just purchased a 3 month subscription b/c it was a good deal... regretting it now.

[Beck38]

UPDATE4:

All confirmed, the 'gap' is from around the 10th of March back to around mid August 2013; back further, it all looks good.

It has been reported, then they (Astra) closed my ticket; I'll reopen it.

The Astra/US plant in San Jose is literally a hop and a skip from me internet wise; those plants on the east coast have to crawl the bits across the continent, and a s-l-o-w by comparison to both Astra/US and Giga/US (both in California), and of course the EU plants (mostly in Amsterdam) are twice as far and go across the Atlantic on submarine cables.

So for those in the western US, there really isn't any good alternative (for a primary plant). Hopefully, they'll fix whats wrong (they have in the past) and things will get back to 'normal'.

[arnesr]

I noticed the issue as well. posts look complete on nzbindex.nl but lots broken parts.

[Beck38]

NZBIndex has historically been at least minimally (to worse upon occasion) with getting all the parts of things, which is why I always tell folks to use the POSTED nzb unless it wasn't (by the original poster) and just be advised that you'll most probably have to do some decent repair job (hopefully lots of pars2's).

But they have been pretty bad over the last few weeks. They appear to 'follow' (main peering) off Giganews, which has been doing pretty bad with things posted from Astra, again, the past couple of weeks. If one looks at the peering (at Giganews) you'd see that they 'normally' directly peer straight from Astra, but occasionally change it up (for whatever reason) and that's when things get wobbly there; however, they usually 'catch up' with the postings in 2-4 days or so, but the damage to folks like NZBIndex has been done.

We all tend to think things work pretty much 'instantaneous' with usenet, but a fair amount of time it really doesn't. I can remember back when the EU servers were DAYS behind the US (and vice versa, depending on where things were posted) and the largest trans-Atlantic 'pipe' was barely 500Mb/s (coaxial, pre-fiber days).

We're spoiled, but that still doesn't mean that folks should be lax watching things....

[freelance86]

I noticed the issue as well. posts look complete on nzbindex.nl but lots broken parts.

as with most indexers, they all "look" complete until you try and download them but for whatever reason the part is missing. could be the server they use for the index is different to the server you use to download so propagation is bad.

something was up last monday as the majority of tv shows posted were missing a lot of parts, most were repairable but 1 i had to download a different post and mix and match the files and then repair it. fun times...

edit: no service is perfect and even the overpriced giganews has the same issues, i just wish astraweb could get with the times and allow more then 20 connections to combat the 502 errors i get on occasions.

[justlooking]

I only hope this can be fixed by April 6th, because as Beck38 knows so well, that's Wrestlemania day.

"WrestleMania XXX will be the 30th annual WrestleMania professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by WWE to be held, on April 6, 2014, at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana. The event will be the first WrestleMania to be held in the state of Louisiana.
WrestleMania XXX will feature professional wrestling matches involving different wrestlers from pre-existing scripted feuds, plots, and storylines that play out on WWE's television programs. Wrestlers portray heroes or villains as they follow a series of events that build tension, and culminate in a wrestling match or series of matches."

[piercerseth]

I only hope this can be fixed by April 6th, because as Beck38 knows so well, that's Wrestlemania day.

Thrones premieres that night. Wouldn't be surprised if the viewers kill HBO GO again, and then watch usenet come grinding to a halt a few minutes after it posts there. Figure about 03:00 GMT.