Usenet Server Newsgroup Article Completion and Retention Rates

 

  • Four things really matter when choosing binary usenet servers:
  • What you need to know (we really need to re-write this section -it's out of date.  Sorry)
    • The third most important issue for for most users when choosing a Usenet company is Completion and Retention.
    • Most premium usenet services are now sufficiently inter-linked so that 99+% article completion is pretty much a given. In the early days of Usenet, many providers could not reliable receive even 75% of the messages broadcast, so conversations and binary files were often incomplete and unusable. Only ISP's have less than 90% completion now.
    • A bare minimum should of 180 days retention. ISP's often only have 3-5 days of retention. Many premium usenet providers have one level of retention for binary files (which take up a lot of space), and another for text files (which take up less space).
    • Days of Retention are important because Usenet newsgroup service providers don't have unlimited disk space, so they have to purge old messages from all the newsgroups over time. First in, first out, so the oldest stuff gets purged - they don't store a number of days, they store a number of bytes. Once a message is purged from the server, you can't download it to your local computer. There's no going back.
    • Our retention days ratings on the Newsgroup Servers Ratings page are listed separately for binary and text groups
    • In general, go for the longest retention you can afford. You never know when you'll need to go back to part of a conversation or pick up part of a file from a couple months ago.
    • The longest retention available is provided by Giganews with a whopping 570+ days of retention. Easynews has a cool web interface so you can easily search for an pick out individual parts that you may have missed in earlier downloads and has 300+ days retention. Newshosting's retention is also quite good, 530+ days in most binary groups.

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Giganews Newsgroups

  • More than you wanted to know
    • Most ISP's and lower-priced usenet services have to purge old messages after only about 30 days.
      • There is a lot of traffic on Usenet, well over 3 TB a day. That takes a LOT of disk space to store. Especially if you mirror it in case a drive fails. And traffic continues to grow as people post more binary attchments.  At some point the usenet news group service providers hard disks simply run out of room. So they have to purge old messages to make room for new ones.
    • Usenet message retention rates come into play for two reasons:
      • Multi-part messages often take different paths to any given server, and therefore take differing amounts of time to arrive. If a message has 500 parts, it might take 48 hours or more for all the parts to arrive on a given usenet news group server. If the server only retains articles for 48 hours, the first parts will have been deleted before the last parts arrive, and you will not be able to download the complete file. (See Article Completion Rates page)
      • If you don't log on daily, or simply don't have time to check ALL your favorite groups every other day, even complete articles can be cycled off the server by the time you log on. Once the message is gone from the usenet news group server, there's no way to retrieve it.
    • How are retention rates determined?
      • Newsgroup servers are typically set up with a default amount of disk space set aside for each newsgroup that the server retains. The administrator can then over-ride the retention setting for individual news groups.
      • Binary files take up much more space than text files, so administrators typically define more space for binary newsgroups. Administrators may also define more space for groups that are particularly active. Some newsgroups only have 5 or 6 posts a day, while others have over a thousand. Finding the right size for each newsgroup is an art that takes some time to develop.
      • Calculating an exact number of "days" of retention is not really practical, as the days of retention really depends on how active a group is. At best, a vendor shoots for an average number of retention days for a group based on size. A quiet group with only 5 posts a day may be able to store 40 days of activity in only 5 MB. But if there is a "flood" of new messages posted, that 5MB could get used up in 3 hours, making the retention rate less than a day!
      • Additionally, some groups are more popular than others, so newsgroup server administrators give them extra space to keep articles longer than in other, less popular groups. So while a while a commercial usenet server provider may say they have an average of14 days of retention for binaries, they may actually only have 7 days in an unpopular group, and 24 in a popular one.
      • Spam can take up a lot of space on a newsgroup server. Many providers implement spam filters not so much to save their members from having to wade through it, but to free up more space for real messages.
      • Some usenet server companies also remove incomplete multi-part messages. This can free up a LOT of space. A 40 MB file that is missing one part is useless to their users, so they delete it. This frees up 40 MB for keeping a complete article a day longer. Some users like this idea as the complete articles are kept longer. Other users hate this idea, as it means they don't have a chance to get at least part of a file that they may be able to piece together by other means.
      • Web interface sites benefit from both the spam removal and incomplete remove logic, because they only keep the complete messages that can be combined into binary files. Therefore, some of the longest retention rates are available through the companies that have web interfaces with thumbnail previews.