Giganews REALLY Screwing Up (last week plus)

U

uzumakifan4

New member
I'm sure (relatively so) that folks don't watch server ops all THAT closely, but especially in the last week or so Giganews has been really, and I mean REALLY, screwing up with recently posted articles (like things posted in the last week or thereabouts).

Not some old stuff, like xxx days back, but things posted the the last week or so. Now, I moved all my 'main' efforts off onto Astraweb quite a while back, and took my Giga account down to as low as possible, but when I see Astra 'skip' something, I take a look at the other servers out there, if for nothing else but to see if other opns are 'hiccuping' :wacko:

But it's been really really bad the last week or two. I wonder if they're doing some kind of 'upgrade' again, a few months back they got so bad, that's when I moved to Astraweb.
 
I have downloaded a lot the last two weeks, around 20 HD movies, 6 collections that are over 50GB each and some games and stuff.
Don't even remember the last time I got something that was incomplete, but it was the same last time someone wrote about trouble. Maybe I'm into the weird stuff nobody wants :P
 
I spend about 95% of my 'time' on the HD stuff as well (a.b.x264 and the like) and don't 'watch' those groups hardly at all (I let Newsbin, this site, and others do the 'filtering'). But the SD stuff for DVD9's I keep my eye on (like a.b.dvd9), and that's where the problem really lies.

Again, Astraweb (and the highwinds resellers like usenet-news and Blocknews) are just fine, just GN (including their EU server). Probably (maybe) something wrong with their peering, but I see major 'skips' even with stuff posted directly to GN.
 
Beck38 said:
I spend about 95% of my 'time' on the HD stuff as well (a.b.x264 and the like) and don't 'watch' those groups hardly at all (I let Newsbin, this site, and others do the 'filtering'). But the SD stuff for DVD9's I keep my eye on (like a.b.dvd9), and that's where the problem really lies.

Again, Astraweb (and the highwinds resellers like usenet-news and Blocknews) are just fine, just GN (including their EU server). Probably (maybe) something wrong with their peering, but I see major 'skips' even with stuff posted directly to GN.
Click to expand...

Lovely... I hope Supernews doesnt have stupid stuf like that happening (I believe they use the same servers as Giganews?).. Well hmm...
 
Back 'in the day' (10+ years ago) I used Supernews exclusively, because (again, at the time) they sold nationwide dial-up service bundled up with the usenet access.

Of course, that was 'way back' when one could suck down mp3's and the like in just a few minutes at 28-56K speeds without going blind, and I was working all over the country and there was no such thing as hotels with high-speed internet whatsoever, not to speak of any wireless!

All that was 'science fiction'!

Yesterday I had my 'handyman' out taking a look at my gutters (pre-winter cleaning wise) on the house, and got into a conversation as to digital TV (OTA) and sat systems (I have several dbs dishes as well as multiple vhf/uhf/land mobile antennas hanging off the stucture).

It's always a bit of a surprise at how little (if anything) people know about basic infrastructure things, even though we just went through (in the US) the digital tv broadcast changeover earlier this year.

Guy thought that:

A. 'Digital' tv required different antennas (NO, uses the same vhf/uhf frequencies as analog has for the last 60+ years)

B. satellite (dbs) systems don't/can't handle 'local' broadcast channels
NO, in fact have all the local broadcasters, BOTH SD and HD in my market

C. Cable TV has more 'channels' than satellite, with more programming
NO, they confuse folks by continually talking about 'choices', and peoples 'brains' translate that as 'channels'; the local cableco has about half the REAL channels as either satellite companies has, and about 1/3rd the HD)

D. Cable Internet is faster/better than the telco DSL
NO, the 'peak' speed may be faster (at certain times of the day), but NOT the real throughput; the cableco likes to slow or degrade connections to sites that don't pay them fees 'up front' for preferred connections, kinda like grocery stores that sell premium shelf space for products, and have hard limits on monthly usage (250GB/month is the limit here).

I go over that in about a typical 2 weeks time, paying 1/4 the price on my 'slow' DSL.

So, there's a lot of misconceptions out there about all this 'stuff'. It's no wonder that when it comes to 'national policy' on everything from the internet to, say, health coverage, the 'crap-0-meter' pegs out big time.

A bit skewed off the topic, but I tend to notice wacky behavior on the usenet servers, having run one 'way back when' in the late 80's early 90's. And like a lot of folks, continue to wonder why folks pay 2-3 times over others just for GN, when I see they have just as many problems, if not more so, than their competition.
 
I know for a fact Giganews has been fucked up, and bad...because I have Supersearch and it's tied to a Giganews account, and all results last week were all incomplete, but if I grabbed "headers" from Astraweb it was fine.

Seems like someone (either Giga or Astra) was doing a upgrade or some sort and fecked all the uploads for the week....

Look for the NZB's posted with the release and open them with Notepad ++ and see where they were posted to.
 
if you look at http://top1000.org/ Giganews is far ahead of Astraweb, Highwinds, and others in posting volume. My recommendation would probably be to simply drop giganews -- you can get BOTH Asraweb and Usenetserver unlimited SSL together (and have money left over in your pocket) for what Giganews costs.
 
I've sent them a mail. Hope I don't have to change provider yet cause I'm in love with the VPN thingie :P


Looks like I have to work cause they want to know the "Message ID's" and stuff AND try to download the crap after downloading headers :/
 
I liken the 'skips' like this to a radio/microwave 'fade':blink:

It seemed that the 'source' or original server seemed to not make a difference, especially as things that were actually posted directly at GN were 'fading out',,,

After some 24-48 hrs I noticed that some things 'filled in', but still there is several days of what can only be described as dodgy opns.

I checked the EU server, and the skips were about identical, as much as I could tell. Astraweb is sometimes bedeviled with this same kind of effect, but the EU server seems not to be affected, or at least it hasn't been when I notice wackiness going on there.

What's interesting, from an opns standpoint, is I've never seen any transitory problems like these with the highlands servers (usenet-news, Blocknews, and such). I thought (along with everyone else) that 'modern' operations made 'fill' servers kinda obsolete, but I still have a handful of block/bits purchase a long (LONG) time ago that seem to come in handy upon occasion.

I think that little 'ol me, sitting out here at the 'edge' of the internet (so to speak), seeing these 'effects', shows that the 'big boys' of usenet seem to be a bit 'asleep at the switch' again, upon occasion. Perhaps there are simply too many news-groups, was too much (what, several terabytes per day of traffic?) to keep up with it unless smoke starts rolling out of the server bays.... :w00t:
 
Beck38 said:
They want YOU to do all their work for them.
Click to expand...

Yeah I've given up cause I can't find the right stuff that was messed up yesterday so I'll just wait till I get some more crap again.
Alt.Binz could download all the files from 2 uploads but some of the files had CRC errors, so I have to find something else.
 
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