- Three things really matter when choosing a
binary newsgroup server provider:
- What you need to know:
- Metered use newsgroup providers:
- Metered plans fall into into sub-categories:
Block and Day/Month/Year.
- Day/Month/Year plans let you
download a specific amount of bytes for a specific time
span. The most common plan is around 10GB per
month, although more people are signing up for 20GB
a month these days.
- There are actually two time
spans involved in most Day/Month/Year plans - the
number of months covered, and the download
limit reset period. We advise against daily
reset plans because getting the most out of them
requires being on line every day. Since we like to do
our Usenet updates weekly, we much prefer monthly or
longer reset periods.
- Block plans
let you buy a specific number of bytes with no time
limit on when you must use them. These plans
are really nice as a backup to another monthly
plan, in case the other plan has a hardware failure, you
always have something to fall back on.
- Most people's needs are completely
met with the 10 GB per month offered by most metered
newsgroup server providers. This is more pictures
than you can possibly review in a month. This is
1500 MP3 songs. This is 12 hours of
video.
- If you think you will go over the
monthly limit, most of the metered services also allow
you to set a profile to re-set your
billing period if you hit the limit before the end of
the month. So if you hit your 8 GB on the 23rd day
of the month, it can be configured to start the next
billing cycle immediately instead of locking you
out.
- Servers with a thumbnail preview
web interface can save you bandwidth by letting you see
previews of files before you download them. Easynews'
interface is particularly nice because it goes back 25+
days.
- For a quality connection with good
completion and retention, the metered
providers are the only way to go.
- Unlimited or high volume usenet
providers
- If you plan to download lots of
video or program files (note, we did not say Warez), you
should consider an unlimited or very high
volume provider.
- Unlimited plans sometimes
are often offered with Fast or Slow
options. The slow option effectively limits the
amount you can download because there are only so many
hours in the day/month - but they are ideal for dial-up
users. Users with cable or DSL really need
to go with the high-speed option, although most
providers can rarely use all the bandwidth your
connection allows.
- High volume newsgroup providers
often have more heavily loaded servers and network
connections, so they are more likely to have speed and
reliability problems. Using a high-volume usenet
provider without a backup provider is not wise (see block
plans).
- Many "serious" usenet
users use a combination of a high-bandwidth and metered
service to get both quantity and quality. This
combination works particularly well if you use a
multi-server newsreader program like Binary
News Reaper 2 or Newsbin Pro.
- More than you wanted to know:
- Some metered vendors have daily limits, others
have monthly limits.
- Monthly limits let you go on a
download binge, perhaps downloading 3 CDs in one night
(provided you have a fast enough line). With daily
you get cut off after the first CD. Further, some
of the monthly usenet server programs let you purchase
additional capacity if you run out mid-month.
- However, if you download lots of
small files on a regular basis, a daily newgroup
download rate might be better because the total for the
whole month is often much higher than for the monthly
limit programs.
- When you compare the two, monthly
usenet limits are better than daily limits. Unless
you download every day, daily programs have you paying
for days you don't use.
- Most reputable newsgroup service
providers do NOT include header bandwidth in your
quota. Before you agree to a contract, check the
fine print. If it is not explicitly excluded, it's
included. Headers can take up 20% of your total
bandwidth.
- Some vendors have dedicated
different servers to different newsgroups, usually with
a daily cap per server. While the total daily
limit across all servers may be 5GB a day, if all the
files you want are on the same server with a 500MB/day
limit, the remaining 4.5GB does you no good.
- Usenet service provider speed restrictions
- A few providers have different prices
depending on how fast you can download, not how much you can
download. There are two ways they can control download
speed:
- Bandwidth throttling: Some servers
limit the speed that you can download files. This
can be a good way to save money if you connect to the
Internet by modem. Why pay for fast download rates
when you can only download at 56K?
- Connection limiting: Many newsgroup
reader programs open multiple connections to the
newsgroup server to download from more than one group at
a time. This can be very helpful, allow you to
download headers from one group while getting bodies
from another. To prevent abuse of their servers,
most commercial usenet providers limit connections to 3
or 4 at a time. (See the "X" rating
in the newsgroup server rating
chart.)
- Some smaller companies (and a few
major ones) sell more accounts than their servers or
local connections to the Internet can handle.
While they may not be consciously throttling the speed of
their connections, the net effect may be slow downloads just
because their servers are overloaded. This is
something to be careful of with companies that offer
unlimited downloads. However, if you connect
during off-hours, you may get amazing download speeds on
the same servers.
- Your choice of newsgroup server vendor
should also be determined based on the quality of the
connection to the server.
- Click HERE
for information on how to perform a TRACEROUTE
test to measure your connection to the vendor's
servers.
- Some vendors place different
servers on different backbones or geographic areas to
give their customers options for faster
connections. In most cases, the servers are
identical, just copied on different machines with
different paths.
- If you are connecting from Europe,
check out the special page reviewing the European
Usenet Service providers.
- Web-Interface / Thumbnail preview services
- Often times a newsgroup may see a flood
of 1000 pictures or 100 videos. While only 20% may be
of interest to you, with a traditional newsgroup program you
must download them all, or at least an index picture (if the
poster uploaded one) to select which messages to
download. That's a lot of wasted bandwidth.
Thumbnail previews let you use your quota wisely.
- Multi-part messages are pre-joined to
create complete files on the server.
- By viewing all the files in thumbnail
form first, you can choose to download only the ones you
like. This saves you from downloading files by name
only.
- The flip side is that downloading a
series of files from a web interface is not possible with
most services. You must select each file and download
it separately.
-
Two very good options for this type of service are GUBA
and Easynews.
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