beta usenet server news.virginmedia.com

[greeninferno]

Anyone tried this yet ? apparently this will be the long term successor
for all binary newsgroup access for ALL ex ntl/ ex telewest customers.

tried it today and speeds were woeful less than 3 MB on 20 MB connection

details were announced in virginmedia.support.usenet on the text only server

text.news.virginmedia.com

[Zanny]

Does this mean the end of binaries?

I wont be able to gloat over my BT isp using friends anymore .......

[deakin]

Originally Posted by Zanny

Does this mean the end of binaries?

Well it could be the end of the free binaries from virgin,with the current talk of isp's getting fined for allowing people to download illigal content.

[greeninferno]

Originally Posted by Zanny

Does this mean the end of binaries?

I wont be able to gloat over my BT isp using friends anymore .......

NO NO u misunderstand me

information about the NEW BINARY server " news.virginmedia.com " was given
on the text server " text.news.virginmedia.com "

it is in beta testing to replace the former ex telewest binary server " news.blueyonder.co.uk " and whateever the ex NTL customers were using.

it's situated in Amsterdam and outsourced to Highwinds ???

just asking if anyone who was aware of it was having speed problems !!

[Zanny]

Ok now I understand. Tested the server using my 20Mb comnnection and got about 8-10 meg, went back to news.ntlworld.com and straight back up to a full 20mb connection.

[bubblegun]

I'm getting painfully slow speeds.

200-400k/sec, 50-100k per connection.

Some people are reporting a max of 5 connections from the server.

alt.bin.multimedia has 1.6 million headers.
alt.bin.boneless has over 12 million headers.

the increased retention is appreciated but its taking an age to update.

I hope the speeds increase

[MagicMan]

I'm on 4Mb and got 4Mb (480K/s) all night. 5 connections appears to be the maximum but thats fine by me if the speed stays like that. Plus theres double the number of groups on there than there is on the ntlworld server.

[Sirius]

Will give it a good test tonight after 5.00pm

However at this moment in time i am getting 16meg

[bilal]

Well it just maxed out my 4mb connection .

Plus it has "all" the decent groups which ntl didn't previously have such as boneless . Lets hope they stay there and they dont remove them like they were on ntl servers

Retention still seems to be 7 days at the moment .

[Richy99]

Originally Posted by Zanny

Does this mean the end of binaries?

I wont be able to gloat over my BT isp using friends anymore .......

how can you gloat when the BT server is provided by giganews albeit speed capped

[Zanny]

well i was under the understanding bt openworld or whatever its called these days didnt host binary newsgroups.

A bit poo here. Speeds all over the place, max 4 connections. Frequently disconnects.
Hope it improves.

[Chicken]

Its gone down the same route as the NTL servers do now; lots of timeouts and articles not found errors.

I thought it was too good to be true, but then again its outsourced to Highwinds so I suppose its expecting a bit much for it to actually work

[greeninferno]

They seem to have solved the time out errors

but getting 5 Mbit on a 20 Mbit connection here

its still in beta testing tho' so.....

Seems strange that the server is physically located in Amsterdam

Can anyone imagine the carry on when something is wrong

customer > VM > Highwinds > wiremonkey with feet on desk and back again

doesn't bear thinking about

[Richy99]

Originally Posted by Zanny

well i was under the understanding bt openworld or whatever its called these days didnt host binary newsgroups.

BT have been outsourcing to giganews for well over 12 months for their news service