Highwinds and their piss-poor completion

[nntpjunkie]

Readnews can beat a much larger provider such as Highwinds in retention, completion, and price,

By sacrificing download speed on older files which has always been pretty awful for me ...

PS

Your linux nzb(on AW):

Parts checked: 16983
Undownloadable parts: 0
All OK!

I agree on readnews, the speeds on older posts are nothing short of pathetic and that is not even to be dramatic - as it is for Readnews so shall it be for all its resellers...blocknews, usenetnow. Post processing is not really an issue for me as I download such large batches that don't even notice repair times for any missing articles, all I really care about is whether or not the downloading and unpacking of the files is successful.

Below is a screenshot of the same NZB checked using UsenetServer and guess what? -



Mine has more green dots then yours @zot! (Usenet-News) - LOL as demonstrated this is not quite a very effective test and we certainly can't make a judgment on an NSPs overall completion based on one single NZB or a single newsgroup for that matter. Completion is not the same from group to group, with the exception of text groups, your higher trafficed groups will have the highest completion. Using UsenetServer all downloads I tested were repairable or entirely complete. Like most I have an astraweb filler and yes they do seem to have very good completion - seemingly because they simply ignore DMCA requests...have to see how long that lasts, anyway the most important thing we can ask from any provider is can you deliver the download I want in its entirety, repairable or not and can you do it with speed to match the speed of my internet connection? What everyone calls Highwinds, at least the tier 1 providers (UsenetServer and Newshosting) do deliver on speed and completion and I am not arguing for one verses the other as a bias I am just stating facts. Speed is good with very few connections needed. Again, to compare Atraweb to any other NSP on completion is really not a fair comparison as they don't seem to adhere to DMCA (reason why they are a great fill server)

[heiska]

Is there any proof for your claims about Astraweb ignoring DMCA notices?

Or could it just be that Astraweb doesn't fail as much as Lowwinds?

[hdjunky]

I can't see the big deal. I mean, when I am connected to the university and I use blocknews to pul down an 800 plus old article and it only comes down at 40-50 megabits instead of my normal 80 or so I certainly wouldn't call it pathetic. I only use the eu server for old stuff cause it is way faster but at least it is there and comes down plus I'm not iving any money to that craphole highwinds!

[nntpjunkie]

I can't see the big deal. I mean, when I am connected to the university and I use blocknews to pul down an 800 plus old article and it only comes down at 40-50 megabits instead of my normal 80 or so I certainly wouldn't call it pathetic.

That equates to between a 30-50% decrease in speed, that is an enormous speed drop over a typical broadband connection of 5-50MBit. We would be talking hours of additional download time on large downloads, and not everyone has access to 100Mbit university plush goodness. No thanks I think I will stick with usenetserver as I don't see any speed drops...I realize that I can't change anyone's minds if they are bias- some are haters just to be cool, but that does not change the fact service is good...

[hdjunky]

That equates to between a 30-50% decrease in speed, that is an enormous speed drop over a typical broadband connection of 5-50MBit. We would be talking hours of additional download time on large downloads, and not everyone has access to 100Mbit university plush goodness. No thanks I think I will stick with usenetserver as I don't see any speed drops...I realize that I can't change anyone's minds if they are bias- some are haters just to be cool, but that does not change the fact service is good...

Ummm actually my point was that if I am getting 40 mbits plus from the eu server for old articles...someone with a connection less than that probably won't see any problems. Certainly not someone with a small pipe of 10 mbits or 20. No big deal to me really since I have used usenet for yaears so I rarely need to go beyond 50 days.

[heiska]

I can't see the big deal. I mean, when I am connected to the university and I use blocknews to pul down an 800 plus old article and it only comes down at 40-50 megabits instead of my normal 80 or so I certainly wouldn't call it pathetic.

That equates to between a 30-50% decrease in speed, that is an enormous speed drop over a typical broadband connection of 5-50MBit. We would be talking hours of additional download time on large downloads, and not everyone has access to 100Mbit university plush goodness. No thanks I think I will stick with usenetserver as I don't see any speed drops...I realize that I can't change anyone's minds if they are bias- some are haters just to be cool, but that does not change the fact service is good...

Look who's talking - you're the one with a personal agenda in terms of benefiting financially via the affiliate program of a Highwinds reseller, as pointed out earlier on this thread.

[Cabalo]

Currently I'm using UNS and I have only positive feedback to give them.

[zot]

By sacrificing download speed on older files which has always been pretty awful for me ...

PS

Your linux nzb(on AW):

Parts checked: 16983
Undownloadable parts: 0
All OK!

The Readnews results actually surprised me that it was that bad (though still much better completion than Highwinds), but for the sake of principal I posted it, sticking to my original plan. (As far too many researchers will expand the test or survey (or even start over anew) when their results aren't what they had expected. As a result, a lot of what ends up getting published, while arguably factual, is in a sense cherry-picked and therefore not representative. /end of rant)

I forgot about Readnews' reported speed issues (I only wish I had a fast enough connection to even notice) but I do remember that Blocknews/UsenetNow had said on the FAQ that the top speed was 40 Mbit/sec.

Below is a screenshot of the same NZB checked using UsenetServer and guess what? -



Mine has more green dots then yours @zot! (Usenet-News) - LOL

No, it actually does not. Here is mine again; NewsgroupDirect/Highwinds:


I think you might want to take a closer look at your screenshot, and you'll see that both your and my "green dots" -part for part- are identical. The files are not in sequence as mine were (I used the NZB file that was posted to the group) and also show a disproportionally high number of the small files contained in the set. These small files are, of course, statistically more likely to be shown as complete (green-dotted) in NZB Download Checker since they carry a lot fewer articles per file. As are most usenet binaries, this release was posted as a series of split rar files - each 100MB rar in this case containing 421 articles (parts).

These files (03 thru 09) appear in both my screenshot and *yours*, and also show identical amounts of missing parts:

[03/51] 416 out of 421 parts
[04/51] 419 out of 421 parts
[05/51] 417 out of 421 parts
[06/51] 417 out of 421 parts
[07/51] 419 out of 421 parts
[08/51] 419 out of 421 parts

Bottom line: Usenet-News(Readnews) on this particular file had only a fraction of the number of incompletes as UNS/NewsgroupDirect (Highwinds)

Due to the identical "fingerprint" of missing articles, I assumed that UsenetServer and NewsgroupDirect shared the same Highwinds server farm. Then I noticed that the EU server had the same missing articles as the US server.

Overall, it seems about 1% of articles are missing on Highwinds servers, and that's generally within the range of being covered by par files. This 99% completion rate seems to be about typical of many files on Highwinds servers currently, throughout their 900+ day retention range. By historic usenet standards, 99% overall completion is probably acceptable, but it's much worse than any of the other big usenet providers, and certainly worse than I can recall ever seeing during the 2005-2009 period when I used Highwinds; the key difference being that retention was much less, in the 25-100+ day range, so the system was in a sense "self-cleaning" as older material was pruned from the server to make room for new posts.
In January of last year, completion was even worse on Astraweb, but unlike Highwinds, Astraweb fixed the problem within a few weeks, reportedly by purchasing from other usenet providers. Time will tell if Highwinds elects to do something similar to maintain it's slowly-decaying "back catalog"

Like most I have an astraweb filler and yes they do seem to have very good completion - seemingly because they simply ignore DMCA requests. ... Again, to compare Atraweb to any other NSP on completion is really not a fair comparison as they don't seem to adhere to DMCA

Not true at all. The real reason Astraweb has better DMCA-related completion is that, like dozens (if not hundreds) of other usenet providers -mostly smaller US or Dutch ones- Astraweb has been flying under the radar, while Hollywood's big guns have had Giganews and Highwinds squarely in their sights. (which makes some sense, since those two companies serve the majority of American subscribers)

The fact is all commercial providers remove infringing content on demand - to do otherwise would be suicide. I doubt that Astraweb's owners would want to see their multi-million-dollar server hardware collecting dust in some police evidence warehouse while they await trial and face time in prison.

[Hypatia]

The real reason Astraweb has better DMCA-related completion is that, like dozens (if not hundreds) of other usenet providers -mostly smaller US or Dutch ones- Astraweb has been flying under the radar, while Hollywood's big guns have had Giganews and Highwinds squarely in their sights.

Oh really? So it has absolutely nothing to do with whereabouts of their main office? (it is believed to be SIngapore)


And Astraweb is really big now.One of the main players out there.

Astraweb's owners

Who are they^ Where are they? Astraweb is a mystery=))

[heiska]

Astraweb company is apparently registered to Singapore in order to avoid paying taxes (which makes them so cheap I guess). Their server hardware is in the US and NL as everyone knows, which makes them fall under the US law.

ASTRAWEB.NET WHOIS
Updated: 6 minutes ago
Registrant Contact Information:
    Name: Searchtech Limited
    Address 1: 80 Raffles Place
    Address 2: #16-20 UOB Plaza 2
    City: Singapore
    Zip: 048624
    Country: SG
    Phone: +1.4156801619
    Fax: +1.4156801619
    Email: Email Masking [email protected]

Administrative Contact Information:
    Name: Searchtech Limited
    Address 1: 80 Raffles Place
    Address 2: #16-20 UOB Plaza 2
    City: Singapore
    Zip: 048624
    Country: SG
    Phone: +1.4156801619
    Fax: +1.4156801619
    Email: Email Masking [email protected]

Technical Contact Information:
    Name: Searchtech Limited
    Address 1: 80 Raffles Place
    Address 2: #16-20 UOB Plaza 2
    City: Singapore
    Zip: 048624
    Country: SG
    Phone: +1.4156801619
    Fax: +1.4156801619
    Email: Email Masking [email protected]

Billing Contact Information:
    Name: Searchtech Limited
    Address 1: 80 Raffles Place
    Address 2: #16-20 UOB Plaza 2
    City: Singapore
    Zip: 048624
    Country: SG
    Phone: +1.4156801619
    Fax: +1.4156801619
    Email: Email Masking [email protected]