News Plusnet

[Xev]

Anybody on plusnet having trouble with news, mine is not working today
Just wondering if it's me or not

J

[Richard Robinson]

Xev said:
> Anybody on plusnet having trouble with news, mine is not working today
> Just wondering if it's me or not

I was, but didn't have the access to say so.

I woke up in the morning,
I had the "ping: news.plus.net: Name or service not known" blues.

And it led to a very odd experience. After waiting till late afternoon,
I rang plus to ask what was up. Their tech support told me he'd never
heard of usenet, know nothing it, it wasn't part of the service and
nothing tro do with them. Pushed to "consult a more experienced
colleague", he informed me that it was a third-party service and
therefore nothing to do with them. Okay, fair enough, and if I should be
sorting it out with their third-party-service provider, it'd be good to
know who that was. The conversation became a little frayed, and I gave
up when he confirmed that yes it really was true that there are
third-party services coming out of plus.net and plusnet has no info as
to who is providing them. Which does seem a rather odd proposition, and
has me wondering about changing provider. And/or nntp backup.


*and*, the moment I put the phone down I had this giant imaginary
teddybear leering at me from the corner of the room - "You asked the
wrong question, didn't you ?"

Next day it was up again, but wanting username/pwd, "which in my case"
etc. It did that once before and sorted itself out after a few hours,
and now it has done this time too.

So, I'm back. But you knew that already.

--
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem

My email address is at http://qualmograph.org.uk/contact.html

[Tease'n'Seize]

Xev wrote:

> anybody on plusnet having trouble with news

giganews b0rked their DNS entries, so names like news.plus.net and
news.mozilla.org effectively didn't exist. I logged a ticket direct with
giganews, but their support staff don't seem to understand the mechanisms used
by their outsourcing customers, but I saw that BobP was on the case and he must
have eventually shouted loud enough at them.

[Richard Robinson]

Oh. So it's actually gignews who are resonsible for that bit of
plusnet's dns ? That bloody teddybear has just thwacked me across the
chops.

[Sam Plusnet]

On 30-Jul-22 17:29, Richard Robinson wrote:
> Xev said:
>> Anybody on plusnet having trouble with news, mine is not working today
>> Just wondering if it's me or not
>
> I was, but didn't have the access to say so.
>
> I woke up in the morning,
> I had the "ping: news.plus.net: Name or service not known" blues.
>
> And it led to a very odd experience. After waiting till late afternoon,
> I rang plus to ask what was up. Their tech support told me he'd never
> heard of usenet, know nothing it, it wasn't part of the service and
> nothing tro do with them. Pushed to "consult a more experienced
> colleague", he informed me that it was a third-party service and
> therefore nothing to do with them. Okay, fair enough, and if I should be
> sorting it out with their third-party-service provider, it'd be good to
> know who that was. The conversation became a little frayed, and I gave
> up when he confirmed that yes it really was true that there are
> third-party services coming out of plus.net and plusnet has no info as
> to who is providing them. Which does seem a rather odd proposition, and
> has me wondering about changing provider. And/or nntp backup.

The only person at Plusnet who has even heard of Usenet is Bob Pullen.
Fortunately he is highly competent.

--
Sam Plusnet

[Richard Robinson]

Pity he can't be everywhere, though. Their site is still publishing the
address of the server, but you have to jbex to find it. But then ISTR I
did when I needed to know it to start with, too.

Are there any ISPs that _are_ still willing to see it as something
people might want included in the service ?

[John Williamson]

I would guess that Plusnet had nothing to do with it. Richard is posting
from www.newshosting.com/ according to his headers, and should have his
newsreader set to use port 119 for unencrypted transfers or Port 563 for
encrypted, though Plusnet may just be forwarding packets using their own
account and settings.

Any break or bad settings in that chain could cause the problems described.

If all that is wanted is text groups, then Eternal September is very
reliable and is "donationware" so you pay as much as you think it's
worth, or News.individual.net has a server run by Berlin University,
costs 10 Euros per year, and runs Cleanfeed to reduce the Spam.

Newshosting offer their own newsreader as part of the service when you
subscribe, or you can use Thunderbird set for the details given on their
help page.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

[Sam Plusnet]

Dunno. I have access to the 'Plusnet' servers (obv.), but I use the
Newshosting servers instead. They are designed to handle binary
newsgroup bandwidths, so a text group like this one is _very_ small beer.

--
Sam Plusnet

[RustyHinge]

I've had online help from the CEO of my ISP on a Christmas Day.

--
Rusty Hinge
To err is human. To really foul things up requires a computer and the BOFH.

[Nicholas D. Richards]

In article <tc4ntk$4190$1...@dont-email.me>, RustyHinge <rusty.hinge@foobar
.girolle.co.uk> on Sun, 31 Jul 2022 at 03:03:30 awoke Nicholas from his
slumbers and wrote

>
>I've had online help from the CEO of my ISP on a Christmas Day.
>

In the old days, before, I had help from a bright and wide awake (more
than I was) lady, manning Demon's Help Desk at 4am on a Christmas
morning. The CEO had been round earlier with the pince mies.

She had not had a support call for 2 hours and, after my problem had
been sorted, we chatted for an hour. I had to terminate my call because
one of my children was coming downstairs to see if Chrither Fasmas had
come, through the letter box (of course he had). He had left all sorts
of goodies.
--
0sterc@tcher -

"Oů sont les neiges d'antan?"

[Brian Gaff]

Virgin did this for years, with an outfit called high winds, then somebody
or other acquired that company and Virgin stopped providing news shortly
thereafter, so one supposes that Usenet ties into the backbone of the
internet is going down, maybe except for a few die hard academic
institutions and the odd paid for service. I'm not sure how outfits like
Eternal September keep it running either. My one annoyance is that if it
were marketed correctly, it could be very useful, and far less restrictive
than any forum which has lawyers running them most of the time, so say shit
on them and you get banned.
Also there are stupid portals to the web like Home Owners club who seldom
make it clear that a post for a certain date might have happened several
years ago, and no instructions that you cannot post pictures. Then there is
where most of the spam gets in, Gogle, who if they really wanted to could
shove in a filter for crap, but choose not to.

Brian

--

--:
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...
bri...@blueyonder.co.uk
Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"Richard Robinson" <rich...@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:UsWdnZ7RSvjqwXj_...@brightview.co.uk...

[John Williamson]

Eternal September is run by an enthusiast, and is paid for by donations.

As for commercial operations, Facebook and other social media platforma
are paid for by advertising, and it is not possible to di this on a
usenet news server, so a subscription of some sort is the only way to
pay for it.

On 01/08/2022 09:33, Brian Gaff wrote:
> I'm not sure how outfits like
> Eternal September keep it running either. My one annoyance is that if it
> were marketed correctly, it could be very useful, and far less restrictive
> than any forum which has lawyers running them most of the time, so say shit
> on them and you get banned.
> Also there are stupid portals to the web like Home Owners club who seldom
> make it clear that a post for a certain date might have happened several
> years ago, and no instructions that you cannot post pictures. Then there is
> where most of the spam gets in, Gogle, who if they really wanted to could
> shove in a filter for crap, but choose not to.
>
> Brian
>


--

Tciao for Now!

John.

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Mon, 1 Aug 2022 09:46:22 +0100
John Williamson <johnwil...@btinternet.com> wrote:

> Eternal September is run by an enthusiast, and is paid for by donations.

What makes this possible is that a text only USENET server takes
few resources by modern standards. It would strain neither storage nor
bandwidth for me to run a full text feed at home, nor would it be
particularly hard to set up - it's user management ICBA to do.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

[Richard Robinson]

John Williamson said:
> Eternal September is run by an enthusiast, and is paid for by donations.
>
> As for commercial operations, Facebook and other social media platforma
> are paid for by advertising, and it is not possible to di this on a
> usenet news server, so a subscription of some sort is the only way to
> pay for it.

Mmm ... I started with Demon, and shifted to Plusnet when it came
broadband time. So far I've paid for it as part of the ISP deal, and
think it's a pity to see that situation looking increasingly
questionable..

Also, I suspect there are a lot of systems around where a (textonly)
usenet server wouldn't take up noticeable space; so public-spirited use
of spare resources for the general good (allegedly) wouldn't break the
bank, if people thought that way. Bursts out in a quick chorus of "This
earth should be a common treasury for all". Ahem.

And, given that not everyone is in such a situation, enthusiasm is a
fine thing, and subscription is a reasonable way of paying the rent.
The cost of my own tunes website is covered by the same bnakakkount[1]
that puts food on my table, and offers a paypal button[2]. Because it's not
much and I'm sufficiently lucky.

[1] not to worry, I just wondered what it would look like

[2] No. My bank account is not what offers a paypal button[3]

[3] That's why paypal.

Ta for your last, btw. My attention-span has other things to be doing
just now, but its time will come.

[Richard Robinson]

Ahem A Rivet's Shot said:
> On Mon, 1 Aug 2022 09:46:22 +0100
> John Williamson <johnwil...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>> Eternal September is run by an enthusiast, and is paid for by donations.
>
> What makes this possible is that a text only USENET server takes
> few resources by modern standards. It would strain neither storage nor
> bandwidth for me to run a full text feed at home, nor would it be
> particularly hard to set up - it's user management ICBA to do.

I wondered about serving my stuff from home, but

1) It would require 24/7/365.25 uptime, and even if I wanted to ohl the
gear to be sure, I wouldn't be happy leaving it running if I was out for a
few weeks.
2) My current broadband upload speed wouldna' take it.

So, pay the rent on a bit of space that's already set up for that.

[Richard Robinson]

John Williamson said:
>>
> I would guess that Plusnet had nothing to do with it. Richard is posting
> from www.newshosting.com/ according to his headers, and should have his

I can't seethat, but I Kno Nowt. Is that connected to 'brightview' ?

> newsreader set to use port 119 for unencrypted transfers or Port 563 for
> encrypted, though Plusnet may just be forwarding packets using their own
> account and settings.

.slrnrc names news.plus.net as the server, no mention of ports.

What I did see is
Xref: number.nntp.giganews.com uk.rec.sheds:1304346

1.3 million posts ? Coo.

(I could have looked at my newsrc, of course: duh).

> Any break or bad settings in that chain could cause the problems described.
>
> If all that is wanted is text groups, then Eternal September is very
> reliable and is "donationware" so you pay as much as you think it's
> worth, or News.individual.net has a server run by Berlin University,
> costs 10 Euros per year, and runs Cleanfeed to reduce the Spam.
>
> Newshosting offer their own newsreader as part of the service when you
> subscribe, or you can use Thunderbird set for the details given on their
> help page.
>


--

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Mon, 01 Aug 2022 13:07:34 -0500
Richard Robinson <rich...@privacy.net> wrote:

> I wondered about serving my stuff from home, but
>
> 1) It would require 24/7/365.25 uptime, and even if I wanted to ohl the
> gear to be sure, I wouldn't be happy leaving it running if I was out for a
> few weeks.

You don't really need anything better than being able to get back
online within a few hours IME.

I ohled a second hand server and a bunch (8) of second hand 2TB
3.5" SAS drives a while back, after turning off half the cores and clamping
the clock to minimum speed it runs nice and quiet with power consumption
dominated by the drives. Things in data centres with 3.5" drives are never
heavily loaded, they're usually nearline archive so nothing has ever been
stressed. Power cuts are the only real downtime - apart from the time
someone pulled the fibre down where it crosses the road.

> 2) My current broadband upload speed wouldna' take it.

That's another matter - being rural I get FTTP running 1000/100.

> So, pay the rent on a bit of space that's already set up for that.

I keep getting tempted to move some of my services out to the free
virtual servers at Oracle that I still haven't found many uses for, but it
is comforting being able to see the hardware that holds my data.

[Julian Macassey]

On Sun, 31 Jul 2022 03:03:30 +0100, RustyHinge
<rusty...@foobar.girolle.co.uk> wrote:
>
> I've had online help from the CEO of my ISP on a Christmas Day.

I had AT&T (The real AT&T get a sysadmin out of bed at
02:00 to help me.

Those were the days.

Last week I opened a ticket with Rectum the cable ISP,
they will get back to me next week they said.

--
"Every Hollywood film is a remake of a previous film or a TV
series everyone hated in the 1960s." - Alan Moore, Guardian, Dec
12, 2012

[Richard Robinson]

Ahem A Rivet's Shot said:

> On Mon, 01 Aug 2022 13:07:34 -0500
> Richard Robinson <rich...@privacy.net> wrote:
>
>> I wondered about serving my stuff from home, but
>>
>> 1) It would require 24/7/365.25 uptime, and even if I wanted to ohl the
>> gear to be sure, I wouldn't be happy leaving it running if I was out for a
>> few weeks.
>
> You don't really need anything better than being able to get back
> online within a few hours IME.

Yeah, but arranging for reasonably-absolute guarantees of that if it's
running in an empty house with locked doors while I'm a large number
of miles away and not prepared to drop everything to come back and fix
it makes it look simpler to do something else.

>> 2) My current broadband upload speed wouldna' take it.
>
> That's another matter - being rural I get FTTP running 1000/100.
>
>> So, pay the rent on a bit of space that's already set up for that.
>
> I keep getting tempted to move some of my services out to the free
> virtual servers at Oracle that I still haven't found many uses for, but it
> is comforting being able to see the hardware that holds my data.

I think mainly my attitude here is just a mechanised version of the old
saying; make something foolproof and the fools get more ingenious. What
d'you mean, nothing can go wrong ? I'd sooner someone else did the
worrying.

Virtual machines, f'rinstance. I ran my stuff on a few of them for a few
years. And the investment in becoming the highly-trained stunt admin
necessary to say hello to the raw 'net these days, in order to do stuff
that's never going to bring in any zbarl ... yes, Gentle Reader, I got
hacked and fuckit.

[John Williamson]

On 01/08/2022 20:25, Richard Robinson wrote:
> John Williamson said:
>>>
>> I would guess that Plusnet had nothing to do with it. Richard is posting
>> from www.newshosting.com/ according to his headers, and should have his
>
> I can't seethat, but I Kno Nowt. Is that connected to 'brightview' ?
>

View > Headers > All in Thunderbird.

It seems I may have been looking at the wrong headers though, as I now
get a path of :-
uni-berlin.de!fu-berlin.de!3.eu.feeder.erje.net!feeder.erje.net!feeds.phibee-telecom.net!border2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!buffer2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!buffer1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.brightview.co.uk!news.brightview.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail

It seems that Plusnet do not run their own news server, but use the
the brightview one, which may be in their server farm.

I am replying to a message ID of
<HvydnQ0UYdcxtXX_...@brightview.co.uk>, so you seem to be
using the Brightview news server to send.

>> newsreader set to use port 119 for unencrypted transfers or Port 563 for
>> encrypted, though Plusnet may just be forwarding packets using their own
>> account and settings.
>
> .slrnrc names news.plus.net as the server, no mention of ports.
>

The ports, which I got from the server help page, are standard for most
news servers.

> What I did see is
> Xref: number.nntp.giganews.com uk.rec.sheds:1304346
>
> 1.3 million posts ? Coo.
>

This is one of the busier groups on usenet and has been for some time.

[John Williamson]

On 01/08/2022 19:07, Richard Robinson wrote:
> Ahem A Rivet's Shot said:
>> On Mon, 1 Aug 2022 09:46:22 +0100
>> John Williamson <johnwil...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Eternal September is run by an enthusiast, and is paid for by donations.
>>
>> What makes this possible is that a text only USENET server takes
>> few resources by modern standards. It would strain neither storage nor
>> bandwidth for me to run a full text feed at home, nor would it be
>> particularly hard to set up - it's user management ICBA to do.
>
> I wondered about serving my stuff from home, but
>

If ICBA, I could do it on the boat. 2 Raspberry Pi servers, plus two
unlimited data packages, which can be paired up to increase bandwidth
from the 30 mbps per router I get in most places. Total power
consumption about 40 watts maximum, more if I turn the screens on, and I
have about 3000 watt hours in the boat batteries.

> 1) It would require 24/7/365.25 uptime, and even if I wanted to ohl the
> gear to be sure, I wouldn't be happy leaving it running if I was out for a
> few weeks.

I have a backup feed, which can be set to automatically roll over if
ICBA, and given what's needed for Text only usenet, a mirrored server
isn't all that expensive.

> 2) My current broadband upload speed wouldna' take it.
>
> So, pay the rent on a bit of space that's already set up for that.
>

That makes sense, as even my el cheapo web hosting package will let me
run a news server if I ask them nicely.

[Richard Robinson]

John Williamson said:
> On 01/08/2022 20:25, Richard Robinson wrote:
>> John Williamson said:
>>>>
>>> I would guess that Plusnet had nothing to do with it. Richard is posting
>>> from www.newshosting.com/ according to his headers, and should have his
>>
>> I can't seethat, but I Kno Nowt. Is that connected to 'brightview' ?
>>
> View > Headers > All in Thunderbird.
>
> It seems I may have been looking at the wrong headers though, as I now

I was thinking it would be either that or that you knew something about
'brightview' that I don't. It turns up in my headers, I have no idea
why but it's not a rabbit ICBA to chase.

>
> It seems that Plusnet do not run their own news server, but use the
> the brightview one, which may be in their server farm.

The 3rd-party provider that Plusnet claimed not to have any info about
is I-think-the-name-is-Giganews. This rabbit can be chased via the
usual search engines if it excites anybody.

[Richard Robinson]

Indeed. And if the time/work involved was chargeable ...

[Tease'n'Seize]

John Williamson wrote:

> It seems  that Plusnet do not run their own news server, but use the the
> brightview one, which may be in their server farm.

brightview is just a name, a company gobbled-up by bt/plusnet.

plusnet news server is certainly outsourced to giganews, by the simple mechanism
of pointing news.plus.net to a giganews IP addr

[John Williamson]

That would explain it.

[Richard Robinson]

Tease'n'Seize said:
> John Williamson wrote:
>
>> It seems  that Plusnet do not run their own news server, but use the
>> the brightview one, which may be in their server farm.
>
> brightview is just a name, a company gobbled-up by bt/plusnet.

Ah, ok. Ta. Vanishingly small mystery solved.

> plusnet news server is certainly outsourced to giganews, by the simple
> mechanism of pointing news.plus.net to a giganews IP addr

I was a bit puzzled by an apparent suggestion somewhere that it would be
them who managed that bit of plusnet's dns.

From my pov, the central befuddlement is that their techysup considers
it ok to tell a punter that they have no idea who is responsible for a
service w/in whose name is published on one of their webpages and which
comes out of their domain. And also that no contact details are
published other than the tel.no. which came up with that information.
It does seem odd, and behold ! it diminisheth the trust.

But I have an elegant sufficiency of other things to get bothered about
if I feel like letting stuff bother me. I've seen it glitch twice in the
last comparatively-recent while but it's come back w/in a day or two.

eternal-september noted, ta. I also noticed that giganews themselves
offer a free trial fortnight.