Anchordudes Usenet Newsgroup Server FAQ

Highwinds is the Donald Trump of the Usenet industry.  Initially simply a provider of the industry standard Newsgroup Server backend software, over the past 5 - 10 years they invested heavily in building a huge Usenet infrastructure and then went about buying some of the largest Usenet providers in the industry.  They took the best features and operations from each and built a Mega-Usenet provider backend with great connections to all the major internet backbone providers.

Highwinds doesn't sell directly through their own name.  Instead, access to their systems is done through other companies that buy from them and re-sell to end users.  Generally, we don't recommend resellers because they often introduce weak links in to the delivery chain, but at least 2 of the resellers are actually owned by Highwinds, so we feel comfortable recommending them: Newshosting and Usenetserver. Two other resellers that we have confidence in are Easynews and NewsDemon because their management has been reliable and Easynews has a super-cool online interface that lets you find attachments visually and bundle them for easy downloading.

Because much of the Highwinds system was cobbled together through acquisitions, there have been many hiccups over the past few years as the equipment and software of purchased companies was incorporated in to the system.  Things have been very stable for the past 12 months now.

Usenet providers that use the Highwinds newsgroup servers benefit from a low-cost backend that lets them offer very competitive rates - particularly for unlimited download accounts.  You simply need to be prepared to live through an occasional hiccup in the service and reduced retention.

One important note about the Highwinds servers is that they have article retention of 1080+ days, but the header index for most groups is roughly 500 days.  That means that if you use a newsreader that downloads headers and you select which articles to retrieve, only the last 500 days worth will be visible, even though there are 500+ more days on the server. 

If you use a 3rd party header index system like the one built into Newsbin Pro, or a NZB indexing website like binsearch.info, the header retention is not important, as the external 3rd party header index pointers are universal and can access all 1080+ days of articles on the Highwinds servers.

So if 500-ish days of headers is enough for you, or you use a 3rd party header index, you might find one of the Highwinds providers to your liking. 

NOTE: Some of the providers and plans have restricted access to the full retention of the Highwinds system.  See notes in table below: