Many UK based H/F members are signed up to Pipex broadband. Many also know that newsgroup access, otherwise known as usenet, is available but may not know the most effective way to use it. Newsgroups are comparable to old style bulletin boards where you can look at and post messages. Messages can contain binary attachments which could comprise anything that can be turned into data beit software, music, movies or just plain text. Much of this binary content is copyright, so I'm not going to go into the morals of whether or not downloading such content should be condoned.
It's your choice.
When you sign up to Pipex you will no doubt be able to find its news server, the use of which is limited to 10 gigabytes per month. This sounds a lot until you realise that a DVD movie takes half that. But there are ways and means to make this go a lot further. First you should get yourself a news client that can accommodate more than one server at a time. One reason for this is that a binary attachment is comprised of many segments and in propagating these sements across the news network some of them can get lost. One missing segment and the whole attachment is useless. But if you have access to more than one server then an intelligent client can go to an alternative backup server to pick up any missing segments it finds. The more servers you have, the better the chance of getting the complete attachment. I use Newsbin, which can use multiple servers. It will also enable you to download headers (headers are like an index) from one server to use on another. I won't go into how to use Newsbin here. PM me if you need help. Pipex's news service address is nntp.dsl.pipex.com. It is actually leased from Giganews which is one of the leading news providers in the world and binary completion is excellent. Before Pipex took this as its solution it used the news service from its backbone provider UUNet which was dreadfully overloaded and barely useable. These servers are still active, and although rather prone to dropping headers are now very usable due to them being relieved by the Giganews service. The address is news.dsl.pipex.com. And the good news is there is no cap on these servers. So if you set up your client to use news.dsl.pipex.com as your first priority server, then nntp.dsl.pipex.com as your second priority, the bulk of your download will come from the uncapped service with only missing segments being dropped into place from the capped service. Once Newsbin has all the segments in an attachment it joins them together, writes the attachment to disk and marks it downloaded in the header list. There is still a problem with this approach however. If you use the UUNet server to get headers then you won't get a complete list because this server drops many headers, but if you use the Giga server to get headers then the headers will come out of your download allowance. To get around this, sign up to Astraweb and get a 25 gig Pay-as-you-go allowance. (http://news.astraweb.com). The 25 gigs cost $10 US, about £6.00. The allowance lasts indefinitely and is yours until you use it all up when you can buy more. Message retention is 15 days. The neat thing about Astraweb is that not only is it cheap (it actually works out cheaper than Claranews), but headers do not count towards your download limit. I bought my second 25 gigs worth yesterday - the first was in November 2003! So now what you do is set up Newsbin with news.dsl.pipex.com as the first client and mark it as a slave server, i.e. don't download headers from it, only message binaries. Set nntp.dsl.pipex.com as the second client, also marked as a slave server. Set news.astraweb.com as your third server and mark it as master, i.e. you can download headers from it. And that's it. A few groups are not carried by the UUNet servers so sometimes if I really want content from them then I have to use the Giga or Astraweb service as the main carrier, but since Astraweb is so cheap anyway it's no big deal.
For real cheapskates (like me ) you can add a couple of free servers as well for fills: Teranews (http://www.teranews.com) - Costs $3.95 US set up fee then you get 50 megs per day. There's no additional or recurring cost. Bubbanews (http://www.bubbanews.com) - this appears to be a virtual service using Teranews. There is no set up charge for this one but again, you get 50 megs per day for no charge. Both Teranews and Bubbanews require credit card authorisation but I used an almost expired card that has now been discontinued. I still use the news services. Readfreenews. This one is totally free with no download limits. Just put biggulp.readfreenews.net as one of your servers and use it. There IS a catch: it's very busy so you can't always connect, and it's very slow. It's still just about usable though if you set Newsbin to download more than one file at a time and have it as a second or third choice server to pick up an occasional fill. Should only be used for a single connection as if they catch you doing multiple downloads of more than two sessions they'll kick you off.
Any question? Just ask. Thanks, Eccles The big problem for me with the Giganews servers, and the UU servers, is speed, or lack of it. Download speed from Giga is around 40KB/s max, and more often slower than that, and that is with two connections. UU is even slower due to its stop-start nature, and getting headers is even slower from both. However, it is possible to get headers from the Giga server and use the UU text server to get full download speeds. There are no binary newsgroups on the UU text server, but because of the way it works, it's possible to direct it to the binary servers and get full bandwidth. The downside to this is that the UU server can sometimes be a few hours behind the Giga headers. That's no problem when you get used to it. The way it is done is to use the groups command to the newsserver and though I believe this can be done with Newsbin Pro, I never managed it. I now use the very idiosyncratic Newsleecher instead, which makes it simple. It also involves editing your hosts file which can be done with Notepad.
Eccles, I'm not sure how you worked it out for Astranews to be cheaper than Clara, but Clara costs me £5.83 for 40 gig per month. Actually, Clara have gone down the pan. Retention is a miserly 48 hours at the moment in binary groups and they have lots of problems. I am moving to Newshosting when my Clara account expires in September.The reason why, for me at least, Astraweb is cheaper than Claranews is that I don't need to use it for anything like 40 gigs per month. If you don't use all of your Clara allowance it's lost. With Astraweb you pay only for what you use. Also, you can use Astraweb to get your headers quickly and without fuss, and header downloads are not charged for. Retention is 15 days on all groups and completion is pretty good. My last 25 gigs lasted me over a year and cost £6.
Downloading message content is still reasonably fast with the old Pipex servers, faster than the Giga ones. They don't quite max out on my 512k connection but they're not far short, running at about 57kbytes/s with two connections.
To get the most out of usenet on Pipex I've developed the above strategy using Newsbin because it can handle simultaneous multiple servers. It can also allow headers downloaded from a single server to be used as a master list for all servers in the list. And best of all, you can use nzb files to bypass header downloads altogether. I'll describe how this is done with a later post.I take your point there about Astra, Eccles. I do use up my 40 gig with Clara, along with plenty more from the UUnet server. I use Giganews just for headers and the occasional fill.
I used to use Newsbin until I discovered Newsleecher. The usenet search in Newsleecher is brilliant, and of course it also allows you to use different servers and different numbers of connections, along with NZB files. Actually, I never need NZB files as I always get headers anyway. There's rumour that Newsbin's next incarnation will be taking some tips from Newsleecher regarding binaries. Newsbin is an excellent newsreader and decent at binaries. Having used all the news clients, and still have most installed, I think Newsleecher is possibly the best there is for binaries, once you get used to its clunky interface, but worse than useless as a newsreader as it has only very rudimentary text posting capabilities.
It's a shame that Forte never gave Agent multi-server capability, but it's still the best there is for text ng's only with the use of only one server.
Carry on with your excellent tutorial Eccles. I'm only poking my head round the classroom door because usenet is a passion of mine and has been since joining Demon at the dawn of the UK's internet boom. (1991?)
because of the way it [text server] works, it's possible to direct it to the binary servers and get full bandwidth
Interesting comment Curls. How's it done?Eccles, I'm just about to dash off out as I spotted this. I'll reply sometime over the weekend. Hopefully not tonight when I get back from the pub, or I'm sure it won't make sense. OK m8. Chat when you're able and willing. There's no hurry. hi eccs, the news.dsl.pipex.com server gives me a 'you are not authorised to connect from this source' error.....
@me - take out the authentication in xnews and it works you idiot......
) you can add a couple of free servers as well for fills:
OK m8. Chat when you're able and willing. There's no hurry. 
