RE: Download Managers

[aaaaa]

This is a little OT, and my question may sound stupid, but I ask it
out of ignorance. I have googled my question, but have not found
information that straightens me out.

I am unhappy with the slowness of my ForteAgent (V4.0)downloading the
headers of certain binary news groups. In fact, quite often, Agent
will not even complete new-header downloads even if I wait for hours.
Since I supposedly have 10MBps, this seems unreasonable.

So when I read that a download manager can speed up downloads, I think
I should explore that.

Will a download manager work with news groups and their headers?
Specifically, with news groups provided by a news server? More
specifically, with alt.binaries.cd.image?

Yes I am confused. I have tried 'free download manager', but do not
see how to tie it into my news server.

Be gentle please.

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

Download managers like FDM are to download from websites, not from
Usenet servers. (Unless like Easynews they have a website as well as
normal Usenet servers). They use http for downloading, not nntp.

There are usenet-oriented downloaders, newsbin for one, but I'll leave
others to suggest good ones. Google "binary nntp downloader" gets
hints.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
There's no place like 127.0.0.1

[Richard]

On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 08:08:23 -0500, aaaaa <b@c.d> wrote:

>I am unhappy with the slowness of my ForteAgent (V4.0)downloading the
>headers of certain binary news groups. In fact, quite often, Agent
>will not even complete new-header downloads even if I wait for hours.
>Since I supposedly have 10MBps, this seems unreasonable.

I had this problem after I switched to another ISP, a cable system
with 4 MB/s speed. Usenet operation was very slow. Downloading a
list of newsgroups usually failed due to time-outs. Every other
Internet operation was fast.

I use Giganews, and they offer an alternate port number for their news
server. I changed the port number in Agent's settings for this
server:
Tools >> Servers and Accounts >> Advanced Settings

Then Usenet activities also became very fast.
Apparently, my ISP was slowing down traffic using the default news
server port 119.

------

Off topic, but related ...
I once had a similar problem with email. I have my own domain, and
use the POP and SMTP mail servers that comes with my web site. A
couple of years ago, I switched to another ISP (not the cable company;
this was a few years ago). I could not send emails via my web site's
server. My web site hosting company (1and1.com) provides an alternate
port number just for this purpose. When I changed in Agent the port
number for my SMTP server, I could send email again. This ISP was
trying to block any attempt to use another SMTP server.