Re: Agent APN vs. Giganews?
12...@12345.invalid
char...@email.com <char...@email.com> wrote:
> So far, I don't see a lot of
> difference in APN and Giganews. Can someone who has experience with
> both enlighten me as to the benefits of one over the other?
Yes:
APN = Sucks
Giganews = Excellent.
I dumped APN over a year ago for Giganews, and never looked back.
Giganews now has a $2.99 per month plan. The reasons I
switched were: continuous problems with APN such as posts not
going through in a timely manner, news groups not updating in a
timely manner, etc.
nos...@nospam.invalid
The Other Guy <knews...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I also use eternal-september.org for text,
> and IT works fabulously and is free!
>
It's the best free one. They were just down for an entire day a
day or two ago, though.
Jeff Grossman
Giganews $2.99 per month gives you 2GB of downloads, while APNs $2.95
per month gives you 12GB of downloads. I don't really see how you can
compare the two.
Yes, Giganews is definitely better. But, for the money I am going to
stick with APN.
Jeff
12...@12345.invalid
Jeff Grossman <jeff....@stikman.com> wrote:
> Giganews $2.99 per month gives you 2GB of downloads, while APNs $2.95
> per month gives you 12GB of downloads. I don't really see how you can
> compare the two.
Simple. Giganews works. APN sucks. Why do you want 12
megabytes of suck? If you haven't figured out APN sucks yet, you
either have very low standards, or haven't been using the service.
char...@email.com
>Yes:
>
>APN = Sucks
>Giganews = Excellent.
>
>I dumped APN over a year ago for Giganews, and never looked back.
> Giganews now has a $2.99 per month plan. The reasons I
>switched were: continuous problems with APN such as posts not
>going through in a timely manner, news groups not updating in a
>timely manner, etc.
Thanks,
I'm paying $4.99 for Giganews, how did you get it for $2.99?
Thanks
Charlie
Three Lefts
<inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:09:59 -0500, Michael <mb.fa...@gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>>At this time, I cannot in good conscience recommend APN to
>>anyone, due to their ongoing technical issues. To be honest,
>>price is the only thing that keeps me with APN (for now).
>>And I expect that to change very soon.
>
>
>APN occasionally stalls a bit - something I expect will eventually
>improve
Well, it's been bad for well over a year, probably close to 2, so
"eventually" is longer than that.
Nicetameetya
[Default] On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:42:02 +0000, Jim Higgins
<inv...@invalid.invalid> declared to all and sundry:
>On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:09:59 -0500, Michael <mb.fa...@gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>>At this time, I cannot in good conscience recommend APN to
>>anyone, due to their ongoing technical issues. To be honest,
>>price is the only thing that keeps me with APN (for now).
>>And I expect that to change very soon.
>
>
>APN occasionally stalls a bit - something I expect will eventually
>improve - but at its worst it still beats the hell out of all the spam
>that flows thru Giganews.
Occasionally stalls a bit!?!?! Unless APN has improved dramatically
since I dumped them, I can only see your statement being correct if
you only use APN occasionally.
Three Lefts
(chuckle) I'd expand that: the statement is correct only if it is used
"occasionally" AND "a bit". ;-)
Nicetameetya
[Default] On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:59:55 -0600, Sj <S...@NOTforMAIL.not>
declared to all and sundry:
>I can say the same - it ocassionally stalls, & I use it a good part
>of every day ...
>
>When it does stall, I either stop the action & do it agan OR I'll
>close Agent, reopen, restart action. Works here ;-)
Fair enough if all that doesn't bother you. But having to manually
mark messages as "Available" simply because APN stalls (I'd put it at
5% of the time) and having to close/reopen/restart is not acceptable
to me and I moved onto providers that have been totally reliable.
To be honest, the only reason it took me so long to dump APN is that I
didn't want to got to all the bother of having to reconfigure Agent.
IOW I was too lazy! But once I made the decision, I found that
removing APN server settings and setting up the new ones was easier
than I thought it would be.
I was also pleased to learn that I was actually paying LESS than I did
with APN and was getting MORE gigs and could download those gigs any
time I wanted, rather than limited to a monthly data cap of 12gigs.
Jaimie Vandenbergh
<gd...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>Fair enough if all that doesn't bother you. But having to manually
>mark messages as "Available" simply because APN stalls (I'd put it at
>5% of the time) and having to close/reopen/restart is not acceptable
>to me and I moved onto providers that have been totally reliable.
Huh. I use Agent to Easynews (which is the same as APN) and I've never
had to do that to fix the stalls that have been happening for the last
few months. Stop and start tasks works fine.
Cheers - Jaimie
--
I love VoIP. You don't get people phoning up to complain that the
network is down. -- Peter Corlett, ASR
Nicetameetya
[Default] On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:51:52 +0000, Jaimie Vandenbergh
<jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> declared to all and sundry:
>On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:47:31 +1300, Nicetameetya
><gd...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>>Fair enough if all that doesn't bother you. But having to manually
>>mark messages as "Available" simply because APN stalls (I'd put it at
>>5% of the time) and having to close/reopen/restart is not acceptable
>>to me and I moved onto providers that have been totally reliable.
>
>Huh. I use Agent to Easynews (which is the same as APN) and I've never
>had to do that to fix the stalls that have been happening for the last
>few months. Stop and start tasks works fine.
For me, the APN stalls affected binary downloads and weren't nearly as
irritating a problem as the text group timeouts & multiple "Message
Unavailable" errors that could only be solved by manually marking each
& every one of those messages as "Available" and attempting to
download the bodies again. Sometimes, I had to go through that process
several times in order to get the bodies in threads I was watching to
download. And that includes the bodies of messages I posted via APN
hours before.
BTW - The APN customer support team were well aware of this problem
(mine being just a few of the complaints they received) and they would
respond courteously with assurances that they were working on it with
Easynews. But even though the situation would improve for a few days
or even weeks, it would suddenly pop up again and again and again.
A shame APN couldn't provide the service they did BEFORE they hooked
up with Easynews.
Jaimie Vandenbergh
<gd...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>[Default] On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:51:52 +0000, Jaimie Vandenbergh
><jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> declared to all and sundry:
>>On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:47:31 +1300, Nicetameetya
>><gd...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>>Fair enough if all that doesn't bother you. But having to manually
>>>mark messages as "Available" simply because APN stalls (I'd put it at
>>>5% of the time) and having to close/reopen/restart is not acceptable
>>>to me and I moved onto providers that have been totally reliable.
>>
>>Huh. I use Agent to Easynews (which is the same as APN) and I've never
>>had to do that to fix the stalls that have been happening for the last
>>few months. Stop and start tasks works fine.
>
>For me, the APN stalls affected binary downloads and weren't nearly as
>irritating a problem as the text group timeouts & multiple "Message
>Unavailable" errors that could only be solved by manually marking each
>& every one of those messages as "Available" and attempting to
>download the bodies again. Sometimes, I had to go through that process
>several times in order to get the bodies in threads I was watching to
>download. And that includes the bodies of messages I posted via APN
>hours before.
Bizarre. I wonder why yours has a much harder time than mine?
All I usually see is the header downloads failing to start for one or
another group. Either leaving it (it'll timeout and work after a
while) or manually stop/start will get it going. I don't get messages
marked unavailable.
>BTW - The APN customer support team were well aware of this problem
>(mine being just a few of the complaints they received) and they would
>respond courteously with assurances that they were working on it with
>Easynews. But even though the situation would improve for a few days
>or even weeks, it would suddenly pop up again and again and again.
Yep, that's what I've been seeing as a direct Easynews customer, and
others too following the easynews.support group. But not with as
painful results as yours.
Cheers - Jaimie
--
207 BC: Chrysippus, Greek stoic philosopher, is believed to have died of
laughter after watching his drunken donkey attempt to eat figs.
Nicetameetya
[Default] On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:27:00 +0000, Jaimie Vandenbergh
<jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> declared to all and sundry:
>>
>>For me, the APN stalls affected binary downloads and weren't nearly as
>>irritating a problem as the text group timeouts & multiple "Message
>>Unavailable" errors that could only be solved by manually marking each
>>& every one of those messages as "Available" and attempting to
>>download the bodies again. Sometimes, I had to go through that process
>>several times in order to get the bodies in threads I was watching to
>>download. And that includes the bodies of messages I posted via APN
>>hours before.
>
>Bizarre. I wonder why yours has a much harder time than mine?
According to numerous posts on this ng, these have been ongoing
problems with APN since it hooked up with Easynews..
Threads since January 2008 start with:
Subject: More APN errors
Message-ID: <gitac4hfniru6eqff...@4ax.com>
Subject: Still having problems with APN
Message-ID: <pa02f457utvuslv24...@4ax.com>
Subject: Forte news server slow in posting
Message-ID: <Hc4hl.165663$zQ4.1...@en-nntp-02.dc1.easynews.com>
Subject: Is the APN feed OK, or is it me?
Message-ID: <l8apo4pvda3um22t6...@4ax.com>
Subject: APN stops your DL during prime time- STAY AWAY!
Message-ID: <7g0qo455c68i07j8k...@4ax.com>
Subject: Messages not available ... or are they?
Message-ID:
<c0890c86-5e99-4c8a...@a12g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>
Subject: Psssttt... Mark Prince: Is APN special yet?
Message-ID: <8801q41kigktopg78...@4ax.com>
Subject: No Headers in many groups on APN Today...
Message-ID: <l0ndq49glu8si6he7...@4ax.com>
Subject: Time-outs on APN
Message-ID: <l35eq45bmrfc2kte8...@4ax.com>
Subject: APN down since noon PT today
Message-ID: <f81uq4hqkmgtds4n8...@4ax.com>
Subject: APN deleting new posts?
Message-ID: <itv7r4h6g6rbj0qtq...@4ax.com>
Subject: Agent newsserver.
Message-ID: <034mr4tfj8vv4v368...@4ax.com>
Subject: Operation timed out
Message-ID: <05eor4178m6thhfop...@4ax.com>
Subject: APN and Agent
Message-ID: <f7tpt41kodeg297lh...@4ax.com>
Subject: Recommendations sought for APN alternatives
Message-ID: <t8svt4dc75e866k14...@4ax.com>
Subject: APN news service
Message-ID: <dgir059qv8ano5on9...@4ax.com>
Subject: Problems connecting with Forte news server
Message-ID: <2ma8a5liibatd663b...@4ax.com>
Subject: Has APN ever been WORSE?
Message-ID: <frd7b5deuk32e99ae...@4ax.com>
Subject: APN is having problems
Message-ID: <2f9pb51u6vueiiru7...@4ax.com>
Subject: APN unusable for past several hours -- another blue ribbon
Sunday
Message-ID: <vcomd5tc70s2r8tbc...@4ax.com>
Subject: Agent Premium News Server stalls
Message-ID: <la03f5hslblulcj3a...@4ax.com>
And I've probably missed a few.
Brian Kraft
>I have been using Giganews for awhile, but just upgraded to Agent v6.0
>which came with a 3 month trial of APN. So far, I don't see a lot of
>difference in APN and Giganews. Can someone who has experience with
>both enlighten me as to the benefits of one over the other?
>Thanks for any insights.
Giganews gets the most DMCA takedown notices for binary groups.
Many of the affected files have only the first multipart removed.
This stops Agent 1.93 dead in its tracks, but I don't know how well
later versions cope with it. If you run into this issue, a non-Giganews
backup server is needed to automatically fill in the missing articles.
Nicetameetya
[Default] On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 04:28:20 +0000, Jim Higgins
<inv...@invalid.invalid> declared to all and sundry:
>I download daily, rarely twice a day... 72 groups. Few if any
>binaries lately, but a lot a year and longer ago.
>
>If you want to hear me say that news downloads a bit smoother via
>Gigaspam then via APN, you win - it does. But the spam on Gigaspam is
>a pain in the ass that far outweighs a bit of stalling on APN. With
>APN I can read mail while news downloads, but with Gigaspam, after I
>read the mail I still have to deal with the spam. So I choose APN.
Yes ... I trailed Giganews for a few weeks and found the lack of
spam/sporge filtering to be a major drawback.
But if you want to compare APN with Individual.net (text) and
Astraweb.com (binaries) then APN doesn't even come close in my
experience.
John Hatpin
> [Default] On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:00:05 +0000, John Hatpin
> <RemoveThi...@gmailAndThisToo.com> declared to all and sundry:
>
> >Nicetameetya wrote:
> >
> >> Due to APN's unreliable & inconsistent service and broken promises to
> >> improve it, I cancelled my APN account a couple of months ago. I now
> >> use Individual.net for text and Astraweb for binaries and wonder why I
> >> didn't dump my APN account much earlier. But why not give it an
> >> exclusive trial on one or two of your more demanding newsgroups and
> >> see for yourself?
> >
> >Looks very interesting. I need to use non-standard ports to
> >circumvent my ISP's bottlenecking, but the website won't tell me which
> >ports I can use unless I sign up.
> >
> >Here's the question I'd need an answer to:
> >http://helpdesk.astraweb.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=32
> >
> >TIA.
>
> Not a problem. I already had the settings saved as a text file;
>
> Please setup your newsreader with these settings:
>
> General Server: news.astraweb.com
> European Server: europe.news.astraweb.com
> Ports: 119, 23, 1818 or 8080
>
> General Server:
> news.astraweb.com
>
> European Server:
> eu.news.astraweb.com
>
> US Server:
> us.news.astraweb.com
>
> Ports:
> 119, 23, 1818 or 8080
>
> Secure Server:
> ssl.astraweb.com Ports 443 or 563
>
> ssl-eu.astraweb.com Ports 443 or 563 (European)
>
> ssl-us.astraweb.com Ports 443 or 563 (US)
>
> Maximum Connections:
> 50 connections
Thanks very much - just what I needed. I've bought a block and it's
looking good so far.
--
John Hatpin
http://uninformedcomment.wordpress.com/
nos...@nospam.invalid
QX <nom...@nospam.com> wrote:
> I have personally had it up to my limit with APN. Yeah, their pricing
> is great, as is support and up until a couple of weeks ago, the
> service was spectacular. Then something changed. Slow response from
> the server, disconnects, stalls, failure to get new headers.
They used to be under Supernews, a long time ago, and it was a
very good service. Since they switched providers, they totally
suck, in my opinion. Most people I hear from report the same
thing. I'm not sure how there are a few people who seem to have
no problem with it, unless they either have very low standards,
or some special connection to the service that others don't. The
only thing I've heard anyone be able to say for APN, is they
prefer how they control spam, compared to services like Giganews.
Nicetameetya
[Default] On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:59:02 -0600, nos...@nospam.invalid
declared to all and sundry:
>On Sun, 11/22/09, at 12:53:55AM,
You've summed it up nicely. What both surprises and disappoints me is
that Fort� seems so blas� about the degradation of their service.
When I cancelled my account I sent an email thanking them for the
excellent service they provided *before* they switched from Supernews
to Easynews and asked them to let me know when they could offer that
standard again. I also detailed the problems I'd encountered and had
complained about numerous times before cancelling my account.
They replied:
Hi,
I'm very sorry you have been disappointed in the APN service.
We are working with our provider to get to the bottom of these issues
and I hope there will be a time in the near future when you will
rejoin us.
Regards,
"We are working with our provider to get to the bottom of these
issues," must be APN's corporate mantra because that's what they've
fobbed me off with for the past year.
nos...@nospam.invalid
Nicetameetya <gd...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
[]
> When I cancelled my account I sent an email thanking them for the
> excellent service they provided *before* they switched from Supernews
> to Easynews and asked them to let me know when they could offer that
> standard again. I also detailed the problems I'd encountered and had
> complained about numerous times before cancelling my account.
>
> They replied:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm very sorry you have been disappointed in the APN service.
> We are working with our provider to get to the bottom of these issues
> and I hope there will be a time in the near future when you will
> rejoin us.
>
> Regards,
>
> "We are working with our provider to get to the bottom of these
> issues," must be APN's corporate mantra because that's what they've
> fobbed me off with for the past year.
<chuckle>... yep.
h...@h-gee.co.uk
Hi.
Regarding your rants about APN. Yes I must agree that since the swap from
Supernews to Easynews service has been somewhat lacking but as I in the EU we
connect to the European servers which are generally pretty good however recently
there have been a couple of glitches with message indexing and retrieval but
that was over a 5 hour period.
We can connect to the US servers directly using the IP address but generally I
leave it as it is and find for the price - at the moment - is works Ok not great
but definitely Ok.
Hugh
>Sorry, not low standards - just a service which usually performs
>the way I need it to.
>
>I post art/illustrative art, repost some old scans of mine/others,
>monitor mostly binary ngs, am able to pretty much
>upload/download everything I want but will admit I sometimes
>have to either stop/start or close up/reopen Agent to get it
>to connect/reconnect to the APN server.
>
>I found the lag time awhile back more bothersome than the
>occasional disconnect/stall but haven't seen that for awhile.
>
>And yes, I knocked on wood!!!
>
>I think if I was doing warez, DVD's, mp3's, it would present
>a problem but not for the stuff I post & d/l.
>
>And, yes, the demise of Supernews was a sad day ... they
>knew their stuff.
>
>Used to be w/ NewsReader but that was more $$$ for gigs
>I no longer need but also run by one of the good guys in the
>business.
>
>Sj
Ralph Fox
Mary Hanna <ma...@yahoo.co.cn> wrote:
> Use Easynews far better has full decoded binary dnloads, 30% faster.
Hello, Roger Sheppard
These days with yEnc, the difference is now only 3%.
Come into the 21st century.
If you think it is 30%, you are living back in the old-time UUencode days.
--
Regards
Ralph
Foke
>Why do you want 12 megabytes of suck?
LOL.
The Horny Goat
>Regarding your rants about APN. Yes I must agree that since the swap from
>Supernews to Easynews service has been somewhat lacking but as I in the EU we
>connect to the European servers which are generally pretty good however recently
>there have been a couple of glitches with message indexing and retrieval but
>that was over a 5 hour period.
>
>We can connect to the US servers directly using the IP address but generally I
>leave it as it is and find for the price - at the moment - is works Ok not great
>but definitely Ok.
I've been a satisfied EN customer for 3+ years with no real glitches
except when they were changing servers a year or so back and those
disappeared once I used the new DNS names.
Granted I use EN for my binaries and my ISP for text newsgroups so
that might well be the difference there.