I've not used Highwinds as my primary usenet provider in close to two years, but in trying out newcster's NewsgroupDirect trial, I discovered a lot of incomplete posts in their US server (I did not try the EU server).
Everything I downloaded was peppered with missing articles. Whether at 600 days, 700 days, 800 days, all file sets I downloaded were incomplete, some quite badly, though all were repairable. Here's a sample shot of quickpar:
Unless it was just unusually bad luck on my part (or maybe some other unrelated reason?), it would appear that Highwinds suffers from major completion problems on older files.
Now before anyone suggests a 'solution' - I should add that it was my full intention to see how bad the completion was. So I had disabled auto-par, and dismantled my usual fill-server arrangement, and intentionally selected older files. (Interestingly, a few of the 'bad' rars were not (noticeably) undersized, as would be expected)
Although I tend to download sporadically, I've commonly got perfect to near-perfect completion for older files from Astraweb and Readnews lately, so this result surprised me.
So has Highwinds really turned to crap?
... or am I just blowing smoke?
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