usenetnow vs astraweb

[Submission]

I'm thinking about going for either the 6 month $8/month deal by usenetnow or the $8/month 1 year deal by astraweb. I'm not too worried about retention as long as its 30+ days. My main concerns are completion and speed (50mbit). Any advice on which way to go?

[unoriginal]

You might get better speeds with usenetnow since their North America server farm is on the east coast. Astraweb is based out of San Jose, CA.

[zot]

I'm not much of a gambler, so I personally wouldn't want a long-term commitment, especially on a service I've never used before, and UsenetNow's 6-month plan at least makes it a less-risky bet than Astraweb's 1-year commitment.

Since you want to max out a fast 50 megabit connection, keep in mind that Astraweb's American server is farther from Toronto and allows fewer connections (20 vs. UsenetNow's 50 connections). That probably won't make much difference -- but it potentially could.

Retention and completion are about the same between UsenetNow and Astraweb, and about the only other difference is that UsenetNow tends to have faster turnaround times on support tickets, if that's important to you.

[unoriginal]

You can also try usenetnow for $10.19/mo using this link: http://usenetnow.net/woot.html just in case you don't want to commit to six months right away. But I've been using them since March and have no complaints. The few times I needed to contact them I usually had my a response to my support ticket within a few hours, even on the weekends.

[Duron]

TBH I doubt astraweb are going to disappear so it isn't that much of a risk signing up yearly

[hdjunky]

Another vote for Usenetnow!

[Beck38]

If you had done a simple tracert (trace-route), you'd have found out that usenetnow is a blocknews reseller.

It would also have shown you exactly (well, pretty exactly) where the server is (it's in the 'telecom row' area of eastern Virginia, around Dulles Airport), and the hop-court/delay may not be what you figured.

I'm on the extreme west coast, yet there are circuit paths that go directly from my nearest 'big city' right straight to the Dulles area. One hop. Almost zero delay. I use Astraweb (physically real close) but also use Usenet-News (for fills), whose servers are in the Dulles Area. Circuit path wise, it's the same hop count.

So, if you do some real testing from your location (Toronto), you may find that going cross North America may be just as fast as as somewhere a few hundred miles away. Of course, that doesn't mean the 'throughput' will be there, and also doesn't mean that it'll be there with something closer. 'Throughput' has almost nothing to do with any delay.

You should figure that each receive/transfer 'connection' to a news-server will 'top out' at around 1-2Mb/s, although it does vary due to the different software and front-end hardware the different providers use So, the more 'connections' generally the better, especially with more bandwidth than GOD.

Get a small block account, try it out. Put 'peddle to the metal' at different times of the day. See how both the internet, your local ISP, and the news-provider react. 'Due Diligence'.

[unoriginal]

If you had done a simple tracert (trace-route), you'd have found out that usenetnow is a blocknews reseller.

Um, no. Blocknews and Usenetnow are run by the same people. What they both resell is a company called Readnews.com. A while back they used to use Highwinds but changed over within the last 18 month or so.

[c0ld]

Changed to who though? How could they just suddenly buy a server farm to compete with GN and AW?

[Racehorse]

all you new signups the reason USENETNOW SUCKS BIGTIME since 1rst week of Dec 2010 ? Both Speed and Stabilty in the toilet -began reporting and requesting fix it as of
Dec 9 canceled today as steadily worsened on both servers !