looking for the 'best' (= reliable + cheap-ish)broadband access deal
(not cable) on a monthly basis. am starting from scratch- so is it
worthwhile getting a 'deal' with everything thrown in?
must have access to binary newsgroups (asked BT broadband- they donot
host them)
tia

On Sun, 07 Dec 2003 00:03:38 +0000, Anon Ymous wrote:

looking for the 'best' (= reliable + cheap-ish)broadband access deal (not
cable) on a monthly basis. am starting from scratch- so is it worthwhile
getting a 'deal' with everything thrown in? must have access to binary
newsgroups (asked BT broadband- they donot host them)
tia


Demon provides binary newsgroups. Broadband 24.99 per month.
see http://www.demon.net

graham.

Graham wrote:
On Sun, 07 Dec 2003 00:03:38 +0000, Anon Ymous wrote:

looking for the 'best' (= reliable + cheap-ish)broadband access deal (not
cable) on a monthly basis. am starting from scratch- so is it worthwhile
getting a 'deal' with everything thrown in? must have access to binary
newsgroups (asked BT broadband- they donot host them)
tia


Demon provides binary newsgroups. Broadband 24.99 per month.
see http://www.demon.net

Not well.
AIUI, a bit better than plusnet (plusnet has nearly all binaries with
ten parts missing, demon just two)

"Ian Stirling" wrote in message
...

Not well.
AIUI, a bit better than plusnet (plusnet has nearly all binaries with
ten parts missing, demon just two)

Hopefully by March 2004, PlusNet will have their new improved Usenet
platform fully operational as promised, and aim to have the best binary
completion of all UK ISPs.

So for £21.99 pm, it would probably be the better deal.

Quote from an announcement made yesterday:

We would like to bring you up to date with our current progress and
plans for our Usenet (Newsgroups) service.

We are aware that, over the last few months, the service has
deteriorated somewhat, as has been documented in the service status
section of our portal. We recently took temporary measures to resolve a
problem whereby delays were being experienced when posting new articles.
The original problem was caused by the failure of our primary news
server following a storage upgrade. As a result of the growth in demand
for our Usenet service, primarily from heavy users of the ADSL service,
the secondary server alone could not cope. The solution identified
(involving the use of a proxy server) has resulted in a number of
unforeseen issues, including a latency when viewing articles and
downloading messages. We are now in a position where both Usenet servers
are fully functional and during this week we will be moving back to our
original two server configuration. This should resolve the current
issues with regard to unresponsiveness of the server.

What has now become apparent is that our existing Usenet platform is no
longer capable of supporting the demands placed upon it. This is both as
a result of the significant increase in our Broadband userbase and also
because Usenet itself has continued to grow exponentially. A 'good'
binary newsfeed now requires at least 700GB of new data per day. This
data must be collected and stored by our news platform. The limitations
of our current Usenet platform mean we cannot currently take this amount
of news.

We can now announce that a project is underway to overhaul our current
Usenet platform. This will include the installation of higher
specification equipment and additional servers. We will also be
replacing the current Usenet server software (which we have used,
without change, for some 5 years) with a newer, much more efficient,
software solution. Work has already started on building the new Usenet
platform and the estimated completion date for this is February 2004.
Once the installation is completed, it will take a further month for the
news-servers to collect complete article listings and as such our target
date for launch of the new Usenet platform is March 2004. We believe our
target will be easily achievable and work is already well underway, with
much of the required equipment, ordered specifically for the overhaul,
having been delivered already.

Once the new platform is operational, we expect to offer a vastly
improved Usenet service. While, as we have stated before, we do not aim
to compete with the premium subscription based Usenet providers, we are
confident that following the overhaul we will be able to offer a
newsgroup service which is as good as, if not better than, any other
provided by a UK ISP.