Meet Giganews Usenet
p2pnet news view Advertising | P2P:- It’s time for companies to start talking to the people they expect to buy their product or services, instead of treating them as marks to be exploited, p2pnet has said several times.
With this in mind, we’re encouraging advertisers to be friends and collaborators who want to tell us honestly about themselves and what they have to offer.
So we’re really pleased to introduce Giganews Usenet which, when it went beyond 300 days of binary retention this past week, hit an industry landmark.
And by August, it expects to be up to 365 days.
Retention means the maximum length of time any given article (file) is stored on any particular Usenet server. Rates can, and do, vary significantly. Reliability is the difference.
Now, “This is the longest binary retention provided by any Usenet provider – ever,” says the company’s Liz Kintzele (right).
“With multiple Petabytes of storage and a robust network that transfers hundreds of Terabytes of data daily, we’re providing an enormous amount of storage and network capacity to our members 24/7.”
Giganews Usenet says it promises »»»
SPEED
In addition to massive storage capabilities, we promise unprecedented speed. If you want something you can get it fast. Just check take a speed test with our online speedometer – http://www.giganews.com/test_connect.html
With servers located in North America, Europe and Asia, Giganews has positioned its servers close to your location to maximize speed.
If you have a high quality internet connection, there’s nothing stopping you from downloading files in seconds! What’s more, the Usenet protocol allows you to simultaneously download multiple files instead of just one file at a time. This means download speeds are limited only by the size of your connection.
Giganews will max your connection, no matter what the size!
AND —- the Giganews Accelerator is included with every account. It provides improved speed, enhanced privacy and greater control over your downloads.
PRIVACY
Traffic to and from Giganews’ network is secure and private, unlike traffic on the open Internet. Giganews Usenet also provides SSL encryption for everyihne who agrees an added layer of security is important.
DEPENDABILITY
The Giganews network has never been down. Not once. Not ever. And thanks to 24/7 support from our in-house, highly trained support staff who sit literally alongside our hardware engineers and software developers, users don’t have to wait for their issues are addressed: most emails answeredwithin minutes.
“At our core, we’re fans of Usenet!” – says Liz. “We have a history of leading the way in service upgrades, and that’s the way it’s going to stay.”
Stay tuned (interesting stuff coming up).
And if you have anything to say, or ask, about Giganews Usenet, post your questions here, or let me know at p2pnet at shaw dot ca and I’ll contact Liz.
Cheers!
Jon Newton – p2pnet
June, 2009
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June 15th, 2009 at 11:29 am
I subscribe to GigaNews and it is a very reliable, FAST service for usenet access. I also know several file sharing admins that praise this service as well. Glad to have them on board p2pnet.
stw
June 15th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Hi Surfer,
Thx for the feedback– appreciate it.
If anyone has any questions, comments or feedback for me, let me know I will be around the site and free to respond.
Liz
June 15th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I have a question;
Why does Giganews not provide the same level of retention to ISPs who outsource to Giganews as you do to people who sign up for personal accounts?
I started on a dialup account with an ISP (LocalNet) who outsourced to the company Supernews. When I switched to DSL, I kept my dialup account for the sole purpose of having access to Supernews. A while back, Supernews was bought by Giganews. Any posts I make now indicate that they are being made through Giganews servers. However…
Giganews claims to have 300+ days retention, but I am unable to download posts from even 240 days ago. At this point, Astraweb is providing me with longer retention than Giganews.
I don’t understand why Giganews seems to be providing less retention on its ISP outsourced accounts than on personal accounts. Is Giganews intentionally running two different sets of servers with different retention times, or is there some other reason for this?
Here’s the path information on a message posted through my dialup ISP account;
border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com
!backlog2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.posted.localnet!news.posted.localnet.POSTED!not-for-mail
Can you please shed some light on this?
June 15th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
I have been with Giganews for the last 3 years, and I love it. It is the best Usenet service out there, and I have tried a lot of them.
I only have one small beef, I pay for the Platinum account that gives me 20 connections + SSL, I just wish it could go over 2 IP’s as I have a dual modem system for faster downloading. Giganews restricts to 1 IP.
Can anything be done without paying for another account?
Thanks Liz, and great to see you here!!!
June 15th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Hi Reader,
Thanks for the question, I used to work at SuperNews and worked on your account back in the day.
No big mystery here- we do provide longer retention for our Member Accounts versus our ISP Accounts. This was done as the requirements of the ISP Market were vastly different then what our direct members wanted.
For our members we have 309 days retention, and spooling up to 365 days- this is not a claim but a truth
And we have this amount of retention amongst all the groups.
Check it out by trialing our service for free:http://www.giganews.com/?a=p2pnet
Feel free to email me liz@giganews.com with further questions and/or comments.
Thx,
Liz
June 15th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Thanks Sir Sabre, I dig working for a Company whose product works exceedingly well and who is continuously doing more to increase service levels. It really is fun stuff.
Send me an email (see post above) and let’s discuss your specific needs!
Talk soon,
Liz
June 15th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Hi. I have a question. Do you folks offer anonymous posting?
June 15th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Hi Again,
Giganews understands the privacy concerns of our members.
We do not monitor the posts made by members. We can identify who posts what, but only for the purposes of dealing with those who would use our service to post spam, or other forms of abuse.
I invite you to review our full Privacy Policy, which is located at:
http://www.giganews.com/comps/privacy.html
Please let me know if you have any other questions regarding privacy or any other Giganews policy.
Thanks much,
Liz
June 15th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Im glad you switched the add to giganews instead of binverse though you didnt mention the reason here Jon I hope it has something to do with the fact they advertise unlimited but its not (binverse that is) . You given 30 gb “quantum leap” downloads which is supposed to speed it up, then u should have unlimited “standard speed” however the standard speed option wont always download the files you want. Instead it takes you precious quantum leap bandwidth! so after your 30 gb’s your stuck with text only usenet or you pay them for more bandwidth.. screw that! I cancelled immediatly upon discovering this.
June 15th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Actually, Sir Sabre, raises a good point about Canadian DSL.
Over here there are some ISP’s who support MLPPP (multilink PPPoE). Basically people buy 2 DSL lines and use the tomato-MLPPP firmware on routers to “bond” the two separate DSL lines. This will indeed give two IP’s, but to one customer. For people here it it less expensive to buy two DSL lines (at 4-meg each) and bond them to make one 8-meg DSL line type thing.
In particular, the Canadian ISP’s who do this are Teksavvy.ca, Velcom.ca and maybe another.
So this situation is maybe something you may want to be aware of in the Canadian DSL scene where 2-IP’s from one custmer is the norm for 50-thousand (give or take) DSL users.
Just an FYI that is all.
June 15th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
“switched the add to giganews”
I didn’t switch. Interaction was the keyword and there wasn’t much interaction from the company, beyond the first post, which’d looked promising. I’d explained that two-way coms were essential, but …
Anyhow, Binverse pulled it after four weeks.
Cheers!
June 15th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
wa happened to the pic of liz?
June 15th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Just a Comment and Sir Sabre- This is good stuff *good stuff=new found knowledge* I had no idea about this and thank you for the feedback- passing along of information.
I am very glad to be here and look forward to providing the forum with some real use- beyond a news story and an advertisement. Jon has been kind enough to share his thoughts and listen to mine and I think we have the start of a very good idea which we hope to knock off mid next month
June 15th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Reader’s Write~ Tend to be a bit camera shy by nature. Jon thinks the picture is a good idea- what do you all think? pic or no pic?
June 15th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
pic puts a personal touch on it, ppl like to know whom they are dealing with….
my vote.
June 15th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
I am in Germany, but I agree with surfer. I think it is always nice. You looked like a nice person.
Yes please. Picture.
June 15th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Show me the pic, then I’ll tell ya!
: )
Just kidding.
Pics are usually a good thing.
(Long as they’re not too scary!)
; P
June 15th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
If I register for a trial account will my credit card be charged once the trial is over even if i do not wish to renew? What happens to my credit card info after?
June 15th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
During the 14-day trial period, you will given 10GB of full speed downloadable bandwidth, and have complete access to any of the newsgroups and articles available on the Giganews servers. Any headers downloaded during the trial period will not count against your 10GB trial limit.
If you do not want to be billed, simply cancel your Giganews account manually while your trial period is still in effect by accessing your trial account through your personal control panel, by logging in at http://www.giganews.com. If you do not manually cancel your Giganews account before the end of your trial period, and in accordance with the terms and conditions that are found on our website, your card will be billed and your account will switch from a trial based membership to a fully active membership.
This offer is available only once per member.
If you have any issues let me know- I can help you.
Thanks much,
Liz
June 15th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
We take paypal too
June 15th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Hey Surfer, Paulus and Devil’s Advocate- I believe my pix is coming back
Thanks for the feedback.
Paulus- Where in Germany are you from? Spent a few days in Regensburg a couple of years ago, beautifu.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
believe me, the unused advertising angle is interacting with your clientele…
very underestimated.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
We have tried giganews before, a few years ago.
We started off on the trial, notified them we weren’t going to take it and that was that. Then a couple of months later we did take it for about 6 months.
We ended using and keeping another usenet provider, but only because we use so little B/W in a month it didn’t make sense for us to pay per month. Instead we bought a block of B/W with no time expiry else where.
I have nothing bad to say about giganews, and never had a bad experience with the trial, nor any problems using them. The are a good and reputable company.
So I wouldn’t worry about the trial. But its your responsibility to cancel before the trial period is up.
Its problem and headache free from our experience.
I think if you search around you will find that the two most popular usenet services are Giganews or Astraweb. These are the two providers battling each other on price and retention. Its like a fun war between these two companies and the outcome is all 100% benefit to the customer.
They are the two “can’t go wrong” newsgroup providers. They’ve been around for ages.
I don’t know if giganews will give a group rate (some do), but their price is already low as is, so maybe not.
Nothing lost in asking if maybe if you can form a group of people 4 or 6 people willing to sign on, maybe they can arrange a special in this case. Or maybe a special rate if you sign on and pay 6-months or a year in advance. Some do.
So if you can maybe find a group willing to try it, let Jon or Liz know if there something can be done.
Nothing lost in asking in these tough economic times.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Surfer- I agree on advertising, the in your face, swallow what we feed you is over- with the power of the internet organic and viral marketing – interaction is the key and as I know learning (and it makes sense when you look at the social communities these days) people like to put a face to whom they are talking with
-
low BW- thanks for the feedback and validation on the reputability- appreciate it.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
nice to see you up and about at a late hour… this does well for advertising, geeks know no hours….
I use your service already, if I sponsor it, it will get massive attention.
you have no idea of the demographic you already bill…..
therefore, as technical editor of p2pnet, I authorize use of, and advocate participation of giganews to all readers of this board.
stw
June 15th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Thanks Surfer (stw)- I appreciate this– very, very cool
June 15th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
“Thanks for the question, I used to work at SuperNews and worked on your account back in the day.”
I still miss Jeremy, Andrew, Ade and the others and being able to talk to them in Supernews.general if something odd happened.
“No big mystery here- we do provide longer retention for our Member Accounts versus our ISP Accounts. This was done as the requirements of the ISP Market were vastly different then what our direct members wanted.”
Can you please elaborate on what requirements the ISP market has that make giving them a shorter retention a good idea? Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper for Giganews to simply use one set of servers and give everyone the same retention?
“Check it out by trialing our service for free:http://www.giganews.com/?a=p2pnet”
Thanks, but Giganews is a little too pricey for me. The main reason I kept my dialup account even though I don’t get DSL speeds when connecting to the news server is that it only costs me $10 a month for unlimited access.
“I think if you search around you will find that the two most popular usenet services are Giganews or Astraweb. These are the two providers battling each other on price and retention. Its like a fun war between these two companies and the outcome is all 100% benefit to the customer.
They are the two “can’t go wrong” newsgroup providers. They’ve been around for ages.
I don’t know if giganews will give a group rate (some do), but their price is already low as is, so maybe not. ”
What Giganews are you looking at? The cheapest price for an unlimited monthly account is $25, which is $10 more a month than Astraweb’s normal rate, and $12 more than Astraweb’s three-month rate. Giganews also charges an extra $5 a month for SSL, which Astraweb provides on all accounts at no extra charge. Quality of service aside (and I’ve had pretty good luck with Astraweb), you have to spend $30 a month with Giganews to equal what you can get for $13 a month from Astraweb.
No offense, but I don’t see any price competition going here at all.
June 16th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Hey Reader I will tell the guys from SuperNews hello- we had fun from 2002-2008 and still keep in touch. Danhiel is at Giganews with me.
Off to bed, I will respond to the rest of your post manana after I consume coffee. Sleep well all;)
June 16th, 2009 at 12:34 am
@RW above
Well I’ve seen the odd special pop up time to time (web specials) that made them equal.
Also, like I said, you may want to find a group of people. Maybe as the one making the group and if you get many to sign on you yourself may get something out of it. Who knows.
If a group approaches them, they may cut a deal. One place I know that many users swear by and use giganews is the teksavvy or Bell at DslReports.com. All these ISP’s dumped news groups (except teksavvy) so people are on their own.
Like I said nothing lost in asking. If giga doesn’t want to do a group special, then so be it. Their loss.
You could always make a topic in the Canadian broadband forum on DSLreports http://www.dslreports.com/forum/canbroadband maybe and see if you can get a group going. Others may jump in, if Liz can get permission for a group rate.
Make a topic here: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/canbroadband and ask if a anyone would be interested.
Nothing lost in trying. Benefits all.
Or maybe if Liz has an offer to make, she can probably contact DSLreports herself and let them know that they will accept group discounts. Jon Can probably contact someone there for her to see if he can help (maybe).
giga is a big and well known name.
Anyhow wait for Liz to reply if this is feasible. If you are not interested and if she thinks a group rate would be good, then maybe I’ll let people know (I don’t need as I use maybe 10-gigs per 4 months).
individually it may be a bit more $ right now w/o web specials. But if they can make group rates like 6 people 10 people or more, then heck, nothing lost in trying.
Or if they want to target an ISP, say teksavvy, and say that if they can get 10 people to sign up for a min time (3 or 6 months or something), I see no problem with that. Everyone wins.
Thats my twisted thinking
June 16th, 2009 at 9:06 am
By popular request, Liz is back
Cheers!
June 16th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Hi Liz
Is there any chance that Giganews will ever offer BLOCK ACCOUNTS like Astraweb?
I’m generally not a big user, but my main problem with monthly accounts is that some months I’m online a lot and other months I’m busy and rarely use it. A pay-per-download account is ideal for me.
I’ve been using Astraweb blocks for about 5 years, and Astraweb’s $25 180-gigabyte block will last me for several months. The only way that Giganews will get my business is by offering something similar.
June 16th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Thanks Jon!
Reader’s Write- When LocalNet was with SuperNews the binary retention was at 50 some odd days in the last 6 months- we had a peak of 70 days which went down to 50 when we bumped up the level of retention for the dump newsgroups alt.mom, alt.boneless etc… When Giganews purchased SuperNews your account received an increase to 100 days of retention- now you all have 235 days. Confused on how this disappoints you when this is a free service from your ISP and the service levels have risen in the past year
ISP Requirements= Keeping costs down (look at every aspect of this not just the direct cost of our service to the ISP).
We are not the cheapest unlimited provider, but we provide the fastest and most secure service- continue to watch how this all evolves in coming months. We have been doing this since 1994 and continue to drive the Market- all I know is I dig working here, love the people I work with – smart, innovative and constantly thinking of ways to improve the service for our members.
I would love someone to do speed tests from around the globe and tape it! That would be amazing.
low BW- I am open to an offline discussion about this, email me at liz@giganews.com and let’s brainstorm.
Thanks,
Liz
June 16th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Hey Reader. I don’t have the answer on block accounts, but will ask the question. Anyone else here who has this same need? Thx, Liz
June 16th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Future of Giganews in a climate of improved service, price wars and retention wars?
Giganews has for years earned a reputation for being the highest retention provider, as well as the most reliable, and for many people this justified Giganews’ traditionally higher price.
It was not long ago that even so-called “premium” providers often had shoddy service, but times have changed, and the rest of the usenet provider industry seems to have greatly improved its quality of service and become more competitive.
Many people have been asking — why should I pay $30/month for Giganews when other providers (Astraweb, Usenetserver, Ngroups and other resellers) offer unlimited SSL accounts with comparable retention, completion, uptime, and support for a third of the price? What is that extra $20/month supposed to be buying me at Giganews?
And what about Giganews budget-minded “companies” such as Power Usenet, Rhino Newsgroups, etc? They used to be competitive retention-wise with most other 1st-tier providers, but now fall far behind Highwinds, Astraweb, and others. So the question then becomes, why settle for 200 day retention when others are offering 300 day retention for an even cheaper price?
It just seems to me that for Giganews to stay in business in the long run, it must either cut its prices and/or increase retention well beyond all other providers – or somehow count on other providers suffering an Easynews-like meltdown and shedding customers.
June 16th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Hi Tom-
All I have to say is stay tuned and keep an eye on what happens next.
Talk soon,
Liz
June 16th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Wow that response sounded a bit silly/cheesey, forgive me
- just super excited!
June 17th, 2009 at 2:12 am
“Hey Reader I will tell the guys from SuperNews hello- we had fun from 2002-2008 and still keep in touch. Danhiel is at Giganews with me.”
Thanks.
“Reader’s Write- When LocalNet was with SuperNews the binary retention was at 50 some odd days in the last 6 months- we had a peak of 70 days which went down to 50 when we bumped up the level of retention for the dump newsgroups alt.mom, alt.boneless etc… When Giganews purchased SuperNews your account received an increase to 100 days of retention- now you all have 235 days. Confused on how this disappoints you when this is a free service from your ISP and the service levels have risen in the past year
”
Yes, the retention increase has been nice. I guess I just look at it as having Giganews, but not really having Giganews. I mean, yes technically I have access to Giganews, but it’s not the same Giganews that everyone else raves about. It’s sort of like “Giganews lite”. The disappointment comes when I search for something on one of the NZB indexing sites, find exactly what I’m looking for, generate an NZB file, load it into Binary News Reaper 2 and watch the Queue screen skip down through all the parts with nothing downloaded. Then I look at the age of the post and see that it was made over 220 days ago and so can’t be downloaded from my version of Giganews. I then have to use up some of my Astraweb credits to get the file(s).
“ISP Requirements= Keeping costs down (look at every aspect of this not just the direct cost of our service to the ISP). ”
Huh? I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be a pain in the neck, but I honestly have no idea what you mean. What additional costs would the ISP incur if you were to provide them with 300+ days of retention?
Increased retention wouldn’t need any additional tech support beyond what they already provide, so they wouldn’t incur any extra costs there. The login method for the servers would be handled the same, so they wouldn’t need to spend any money on that. The only possible excuse I can think of is that with an additional 80 days or so of retention, users would have more binary posts available to them and could theoretically download more, causing an increase in bandwidth usage. However, as LocalNet is a dialup company, such an increase would be marginal. I’m probably the exception since I log into the server from my DSL account using my LocalNet ID.
What about the cost to Giganews? In order to provide shorter retention to ISPs, doesn’t Giganews have to run two sets of servers? One set for your personal users and set for ISPs? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to only run a single set of servers?
June 17th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Hey Reader-
No worries- questions are good.
I understand on Giganews Light- but I do believe you are getting it for $12.99 per month- so… also you would be surprised how many people are doing exactly what you are doing.
Transit Fees (people who access the later files do download more), business exposure, & political pressure feed into the equation heavily.
The way we have it set up is cost effective.
Binary News Reaper 2- is that a good piece of software? That is one I have never tried.
Thx,
Liz
June 17th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Several posts have presented a question that remains unanswered, so I’ll try to ask it again.
—–>> Why Does Giganews limit its reseller accounts to only 200 days of its 300 day server retention? <<——–
(Highwinds and Astraweb give resellers the full 300+ days their servers carry)
June 17th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Reader,
I saw the statement- but no question- I am happy and willing to answer all questions.
Giganews is the Premium product- pricing and product reflect this.
.
We have made a choice to differentiate Giganews and will continue to do this- we are not done with where Giganews is going
Thanks Reader,
Liz
June 17th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
200, 300, 365.. is it all that confusing? I mean, are you on a 28.8 modem and it takes you 215 days to download Wolverine?
here’s a real question…
is there something I am missing in the service that does searches like newzbin to find the newsgroup that contains the ‘files’ im looking for? it would be easier to search in one app than bouncing back and forth.. newzbin isnt always accurate for newgroup locations for files.. i search, i find, i surf to the group, its not there…
u know, releasers tend to bounce around using different groups to post in order to stymie asshats like the MAFIAA. and I dunno about everyone else, but I never found a file I wanted and THEN waited 300 days to download it.
stw
p.s. show of hands who thinks Liz is hot ?
June 17th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Thanks Surfer
-
IMHO right now the best software out there for this is altbinz:
http://www.altbinz.net/
You have to donate to get upgrades and the full functionality, folks seem to dig it and it is currently the best of what you are asking for.
Liz
June 17th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
thanks Liz. ill check it out..
stw ( [Share The Wealth] )
June 17th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Very nice- just read the Share The Wealth™ articles- dig the way you think
June 17th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
thanks Liz, I could be considered ‘outspoken’..
June 17th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
“understand on Giganews Light- but I do believe you are getting it for $12.99 per month- so… also you would be surprised how many people are doing exactly what you are doing.”
To be honest, I’m thinking of dropping it and just going with Astrawab. I’m pay $9.95 a month, but I only get a top download speed of 80K/s. It used to be that it had the longer retention, but that’s no longer true (for me).
“Transit Fees (people who access the later files do download more), business exposure, & political pressure feed into the equation heavily.
The way we have it set up is cost effective.”
I’m suprised that LocalNet hasn’t dropped Usenet yet, especially as they’re based in New York, home of Andrew Cuomo, who pressured ISPs into dropping newsgroup access. I know, supposedly he only wanted them to drop a handfull of groups, but most dropped all Usenet access, or all the binary groups.
“Binary News Reaper 2- is that a good piece of software? That is one I have never tried.”
That depends on whether or not you’re willing to put up with its flakiness. The author seems to be long gone and the program has a mind of its own.
Good: Each part of a multi-part post is listed separately in the queue and each part will be saved to disk as soon as it’s downloaded (other programs wait until all the parts are downloaded to save the file), this means that no downloaded data is ever lost in the event of a crash or power failure. It also means that you can download just the first few parts of a file and then preview it. In a couple cases, I have downloaded just the few two parts to each Rar file in a 3GB set, used the command version of Rar to list the contents, then just downloaded the specific rar files I needed for the files I wanted. That can’t be done with most other programs. Also, not only will it download from multiple servers at once, if a part isn’t on one server or is corrupt, it will try to download that part from another server. Each connection can be connected or disconnected separately and specific posts/parts can be assigned to specific servers. It’s free.
Bad: If you close BNR2 with files still in the queue, when you next run it, some of the files won’t be downloaded. You have to delete them and re-load the NZB file, or re-select them. BNR2 is supposed to remember files you’ve already downloaded to avoid downloading them again (unless you tell it to), but this feature is very hit-or-miss. Often, if I need to reboot, I stop BNR2, delete everything from the queue, reboot, load the NZB file again, only to discover that all the previously downloaded parts are listed again. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Part 1 of each multi-part post will often be offset in the queue so that sorting the posts by subject moves all the part 1’s to the bottom of the list, but not all the time. Usually when you want it to do it, it doesn’t. The horizontal scroll bar doesn’t move smoothly, but rather it “jumps”. With long subject lines, it only seems to go so far, then it jumps to the end of the line showing the article ID. When using the mouse to scroll vertically in the queue, it sometimes switches to horizontal scrolling for no apparent reason, until you click in the queue window again. Occasionally, it will refuse to download anything at all. When this happens, you have to go into the BNR2 directory and delete all the files with a .BNR extension, except for “GrpLst.bnr”. Then run the program again. Also, the default display for browsing newsgroups directly looks like it was designed by a colorblind clown. Even after changing the colors, it’s still a little confusing to use, which is why I stick to NZB files with it.
“Giganews is the Premium product- pricing and product reflect this.
.”
We have made a choice to differentiate Giganews and will continue to do this- we are not done with where Giganews is going
So in other words, it’s a marketing decision. Why didn’t you just say so? Also, have you ever considered the impact this has on potential sales of personal accounts? For a long time, I thought that Giganews’s 250+ day retention was either really crappy, or a flat-out lie because I couldn’t download anything that old. If people have Giganews as part of their ISP and don’t see the 300 day retention that Giganews advertises, then when they go looking for a personal account they’re going to think that their money would be better spent elsewhere.
“is there something I am missing in the service that does searches like newzbin to find the newsgroup that contains the ‘files’ im looking for? it would be easier to search in one app than bouncing back and forth.. newzbin isnt always accurate for newgroup locations for files.. i search, i find, i surf to the group, its not there…”
I just go to binsearch.info or newzleech.com, search for what I want, then generate an NZB file. Unless the file is too old, as detailed in my previous post, it downloads just fine.
“u know, releasers tend to bounce around using different groups to post in order to stymie asshats like the MAFIAA.”
I’ve never used Newzbin, but I know that when searching on free indexing sites, you often have to search for the release name rather than the official title. At least for movies. TV shows are posted normally.
“and I dunno about everyone else, but I never found a file I wanted and THEN waited 300 days to download it.”
Neither have I. Where the retention issue comes in is when you search for something you just learned that you wanted and Binsearch says it was posted 250-300 days ago. In fact, a friend recently asked me if I could find an episode of the Tonight Show that aired toward the end of last year. I found it, but it was 244 days old and I had to download it from Astraweb because my Giganews retention doesn’t go back that far. That happens fairly often, I’ll see something, think “I should see if that’s been posted recently”, do a search and find that it was posted months ago.
Of course, you can always request a re-post, but such requests don’t always get filled, just like on the P2P networks. I’ve been trying to get 6 episodes of a cancelled SciFi show re-shared on eD2K for like a month now…
June 17th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
@Reader I am confused on how you are tying my response on the Reseller question to the question on the ISP requirements and in all honesty I would consider neither of the decisions based on Marketing- but I think we might just have to agree to disagree. I’d rather be happy then be right
When a few more things shake out in the coming months I think you might sway your thinking a bit, but I could be wrong… if you want to try out our service than- contact me at liz@giganews.com and I will hook you up.
Thx,
Liz
June 17th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
personally, I get 700-800k from giganews.
for dynamic file sharing, you have to get a community going, then you distribute the demand, joe gets Battlestar Galactica and Sarah Connor, fred gets 24 and TrueBlood, surfer gets the best and newest movies, etc, etc..
I have the benefit of building a community for years, so [we] get all the new stuff, and dont have to worry about ‘old’ stuff, cause someone already got it.
dont forget to buy alot of harddrives, i personally have over 5Tb online, which grows by ~250Gb/mo.
good luck and stw.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
oh, and be sure and get a couple of rent/rip/return dudes… we even ‘gasp’ a couple of dudes that actually BUY BluRays to rip for the community ‘pot’.
Just like the MAFIAA asshats do, we ‘buy’ once, and distribute forever. they probably owe US money…
we have one dude that has absolutely EVERYTHING the Grateful Dead ever released, and didnt release in digital format. and the asshats dont even offer old Grateful Dead shit online anywhere, they should be paying us for distribution. this is just one example of a community member ‘Sharing The Wealth’.
June 17th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
@ surfer
And I have a HUGE collection of Peter Gunn theme and Kingsmen Louie Louie covers.
heh
Cheers!
June 17th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
and the RIAA has the audacity to call Britney Spears ‘talent’, we know better dont we Jon…
now THATS a fucking crime.
June 17th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Britney who?
Cheers!
June 17th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
ill trade you, Dizzy Gillespie for your Peter Gunn…
Clitney Spears, u know the talentless lipsyncing whore, that when diminished, revitalizes itself with head shaving, child abuse, or lesbian tendencies to try and ‘re-invent’ her popularity, the mouseketeer that eventually will show her tits to save her ’significance’ singing (if you can call it that) prewritten cookie cutter obsolescent crap.. or at least until the MAFIAA can introduce the next underage sex pedophilic icon with no talent…
, oh wait, they did with Mylie Cyrus, and Hanna Montana.
ill stick to Ray Charles and the Beatles….
I hope your turning over in your grave Jack Valenti.., ive sneakernet’ed the Beatles Black Box in FLAC to wear out a 500 spindle of CDs.
stw, im on a roll tonight, w00t.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
@ surfer
How about Dizzie in Havana? And Miles?And Chick Corea? John Mayall? Or Jimi Hendrix? Yo-Yo Ma? Stan Getz? Blood, Sweat & Tears. And and …..
They’re all online. And then some. =)
Cheers!
June 17th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
agreed, p2p has 1.000.000x the collections that imeem, hulu, iTunes, and everything else combined has..
the MAFIAA should be worried, we have a content distribution network that is unorganized, yet vastly outdoes everything they could possibly imagine. imagine if we actually organized…
mebbe the asshats DO have a clue about how incredibly diverse the p2p world really is, and realize there is no competing with it. im working on owning copies of everything i want for my library.
i get goosebumps every time i get something that pisses Mitch off, without paying for it.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
@Liz – will Giganews ever put up a SYSTEM STATUS page?
For unexplained reasons, Giganews is the only major NSP that does not have one. This would save users a lot of time and aggravation in figuring out why they are experiencing problems.
Case in point: around the beginning of the year, posts made to Giganews were not showing up, and users had no way of knowing that this was a system-wide problem at Giganews that had been ongoing for many weeks.
Incidentally, this was happening around the same time that Giganews’ actual retention was under 200 days, while the website continued to state (week after week) that retention was 240 days.
Although Giganews has generally had less frequent problems than the average usenet provider, Giganews’ decision to NOT announce ongoing technical issues only serves to exasperate users when problems arise.
A little more transparency would be a welcome change.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
@Reader I don’t know the history behind this but will ask the question.
As far as service issues, I started my career at a hosted service provider whose software was thrown together and run in the dotcom boom on expensive EMCs and Veritas Software- I spent many sleepless nights with irate customers who had lost data. I made a vow at that point to always work for people who knew their stuff with operations teams who were tight and efficient and always improving. Next came SuperNews, a stellar group of guys who ran a tight ship but were not invested in.
Been very impressed at Giganews from the bottom up, technology, operations, support and a tight and smart executive team.
The rest of ya’ll the minute Britney Spears enters a thread I tend to leave, for you I will make an exception- and did you have to add Miley into the equation
?
June 18th, 2009 at 1:50 am
Liz says:
“We are not the cheapest unlimited provider, but we provide the fastest and most secure service …
I would love someone to do speed tests from around the globe and tape it! That would be amazing. ”
Giganews might be the fastest provider on average, but it’s apparently not the fastest in many reported instances. Users in Southern California have reported that Astraweb is significantly faster than Giganews. A few users in Europe have also reported similar results with the Amsterdam servers. This is presumably using raw, not customized routing. As speed naturally depends on the actual routing involved, Giganews may end up being slightly faster or slower than other providers from any given location.
The term “most secure service” might benefit from a more exacting definition. If this refers to encryption, is Giganews somehow more secure than other 256bit SSL providers?
June 18th, 2009 at 1:56 am
@Liz;
“@Reader I am confused on how you are tying my response on the Reseller question to the question on the ISP requirements and in all honesty I would consider neither of the decisions based on Marketing- but I think we might just have to agree to disagree. I’d rather be happy then be right”
The “reseller question” started out by stating that the “question” had already been asked, but that you hadn’t answered it, so they were asking it again. Since the term “reseller” had not been used in this thread up until that point, I assumed the poster of that message to be equating ISPs with resellers, even if they technically aren’t resellers.
Frankly, and I’m sorry if this offends you, your answers seem like typical PR doublespeak to me. In response to my question, you wrote;
“Transit Fees (people who access the later files do download more), business exposure, & political pressure feed into the equation heavily.
The way we have it set up is cost effective.”
However, you really did not explain how any of those relate to giving ISPs shorter retention times. Let’s take each one, one at a time;
“Transit fees” – The current volume of binary posting to Usenet is such that nobody could effectively download everything that’s posted each day. For most users in America, they could already download 24/7. Not to mention that if a user can’t download something that was posted 240 days ago, they’ll either get it from another provider, as I did, or they will download something else instead. Or they will get it from the P2P networks. In any case, the shorter retention time doesn’t offer any bandwidth savings to the ISP. Additionally, since the longer retention is mostly only used for downloading specific things that you didn’t realize you wanted or didn’t know were posted at the time they were new, older posts don’t get downloaded as much as newer stuff. The argument that a few extra months of retention would cost the ISPs in more bandwidth usage just doesn’t hold up.
“business exposure” – Whose? If you mean Giganews, how does giving ISPs, what amounts to an inferior version of your service, provide good exposure for Giganews? People will assume that since they only get 220 days of retention, that the 300+ days is just hype, or that the servers are unreliable and will look at other services when deciding on a personal account.
“political pressure” – Political pressure??? How does a difference of about 80 days of retention make a difference to anyone in any kind of position of authority? Who would say “300 days of retention!!! That’s completely unacceptable! Cut your retention to ISPs down to at least 220 days!” Objectionable content is posted every day. What possible political reason would make content up to 220 days acceptable, but content older than that is unacceptable?
You claim it’s “cost effective” but you have yet to clearly explain exactly how providing increased retention to ISPs would make providing them with Usenet service NOT cost effective, other than the vague argument that a shorter retention magically makes people download less. You haven’t elaborated on the other excuses you mentioned at all.
Why is it so hard to get straight, definitive answers out of any company? What is the political pressure that you speak of? What were the terms of this pressure? How did this pressure affect Giganews’s decision about ISP retention? How is running two sets of servers with different retention times “cost effective” for Giganews?
If you’re not allowed to answer such questions or you don’t know the answers, then please say so. Right now, your answers just come off as evasive.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:17 am
Small correction to my post: I was wrong, the term “reseller” WAS used before, however it wasn’t used in the context of a Giganews reseller, but rather to refer to other Usenet providers in general. Nowhere were Giganews resellers mentioned. As far as I can see, I was the only one asking about lower retention up until the “reseller question” you replied to, so I have to assume that they were referring to my question about ISPs when they mentioned resellers and said the question had been asked before. That is why I tied your response about resellers to my ISP question.
June 18th, 2009 at 7:28 am
hehehe, sorry Liz
June 18th, 2009 at 10:47 am
@Tom- Thanks for the feedback- interestingly, with our recent expansions I doubt West Coast America or anywhere in Europe is slower.
On being more secure- it goes beyond SSL Encryption to our policies and how we handle data.
and again- all I can say is stay tuned and keep an eye on what happens next! Just as we started the drive to higher retention we are….
@ReadersWrite- Wowsa, marketing double speak? That is a first
Have I truly gone to the dark side? Having come from Hosted Ops and grown wise in a Datacenter and on grave yard shifts, I know what that means…no flame wars for me. I am happy to discuss with you live, email me and we can set up a time to talk. On our Architecture and costs I have clearly said all I can say, I want to keep my job- as you can tell I kinda like it and might be a little pumped about what is happening daily here.
For All: Thanks for welcoming me to the board and the lively dialogue- I will be a fixture
June 18th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
“Wowsa, marketing double speak? That is a first
Have I truly gone to the dark side?”
When I used to ask Jeremy or Andrew why something was done the way it was, they either explained it in clear, concise detail (most of the time), or they stated that it was against corporate policy to discuss it (some of the time). I’m sorry, but your answers are vague and don’t actually explain anything. So yes, marketing double-speak.
“On our Architecture and costs I have clearly said all I can say”
Translation: Giganews doesn’t want its employees actually explaining why it does things the way it does.
June 19th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
I have another issue I’d like to ask you about. In August of last year there was a user who got into an argument with some of the users of the group “alt.binaries.multimedia.scifi” and decided to try and ruin the group for everyone. First he posted a message telling people to back off or he would “f***” that group as he claimed to have done to another. When the other users refused to give in, he clearly stated his intention to cross-post everything he had to that group as well as others. He then started cross-posting 700MB, non-scifi movies to that group as well as several others, most of which were inappropriate for the films he was posting. When he started doing this, several users, myself included started reporting him to the Giganews abuse address for violating the Giganews Acceptable Use Policy, which states:
Off-Topic Posting
Nearly every newsgroup has a stated topic or acceptable range of topics for posting or discussion. Blatant disregard of the intended subject matter in a newsgroup will be treated as abusive posting. Posting off topic material in large volume or with apparent malicious intent will lead to immediate account termination.
Each time he posted another off-topic movie, he was reported, including the full headers of his post (one example part for each 700MB post, I didn’t think Giganews would want me to send hundreds of headers). I don’t know how much more blatant his abuse could have been. He clearly stated that he was going to post large volumes of off-topic material to the group in order to ruin it for others and then he did exactly that. From the time he first started, it took at least two weeks before his account was terminated, by which time he’d posted at least a dozen movies, if not more. I assume his account was terminated, I never received any response at all from Giganews, not even an automated acknowledgement of my reports. He just started posting from a different service one day.
Why did it take Giganews two weeks to terminate the account of someone who was openly posting off-topic 700MB movies in a self-proclaimed attempt to destroy a specific newsgroup?
June 20th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Reader’s Write-
Do you have a copy of the email you submitted? All of these are tracked, ticketed and logged in our system to ensure a timely response. Please send me this email via email and I will be able to explain this to you. If you do not, please send me more information- what account you submitted this from (email address), were you using Giganews through your ISP or were you a GN Consumer direct? If the later, what was your GN Account #?
Let me know, thanks.
Happy Saturday,
Liz