New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

For a few weeks now since switching to VM's usenet service (from giganews after speed problems) when I found out that vm had outsourced their servers to easynews i've been running a few dl tests to see what you do & don't get from vm's new servers as their seems to be a lot of confusion.

VM Usenet Key Points:
1. The header retention is 7 days.

2. The data retention is 100 days.
(I've personally downloaded several tv episodes that were 98 days old)

I've tried movies, music, games & tv and found that the completion is excellent (only had to use pars once in 50+ dl's) & retention to be solid.

However there is one area that DOES NOT conform to the above rules & that is pr0n! When you want to dl pr0n you're basically going to find it very hit & miss.

During my "research" I found that it was basically 50/50 as to whether or not the pr0n item in question was carried at all regardless of group used.

One area that was particularly poor was clips. Here I found that the chances of getting what you were after dropped to about 70/30 against.

Top Tips for VM usenet service:

1. If you likes you some Pr0n then look elsewhere (99% of people here ;) ).

2. To overcome the short headers retention period you need to use a nzb service.
(I use Newzbin: http://v3.newzbin.com , and haven't actually used headers in over 3 years).

There we are. Pr0n lovers should look elsewhere but those of us who don't buy kleenex in bulk from wholesalers actually have a decent & above all free usenet service from VM (that is until they decide to f**k it up somehow).

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

interesting. might be quite useful for some people :p:

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

An NZB service is a site that provides NZB downloads, right? Like Binsearch?

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

Correct

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

It does seem like the news servers from virgin are retaining a good amount of data.. At the moment that is. I would be tempted to stop my subscription to giganews and save a few £'s but i know how unstable virgin can be.. If it stays like this for a couple of months i can see myself using their own servers.

Only time will tell.....

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

Well I tried to download a nzb for something 25 days old yesterday and it was unable to retrieve the files.

I have no problem with <7 day old files.

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

for free 7 days is good i have to say. so much better than the old 3 days with loads of incompletes allthe time, that sucked so bad.
Of course it's not as good as Giganews (which i still use) but then thats not free. I think this is the first good thing i've said about VM for quite sometime lol.

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

hi!

this may be a little off topic.... but, i was wondering what the implications are for downloading movies or tv shows from the VM newsgroup service?

considering they don't use ssl encryption, surely VM know exactly what you're downloading and when?

cheers! dan

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

Most ISP's don'tcare what you download as long as there's not a 3rd party organization telling them that there's such an IP downloading such a thing at such a date&time.

But yes that is off topic and can be discussed in THIS THREAD

Kymmy

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

thanx kymmy :)

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

I'm not sure about anyone else but, even using NZBs, I only get the 7 day retention as already stated. Is there some sort of trick to getting up to 98 day retention? :dozey:

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

What VM usenet server address are you using? Remember that since May vm switched to easynews and the address is: news.virginmedia.com.

As to the retention probs what are you trying to download & from which group? Are you perhaps trying to dl some pr0n?

I just downloaded all the current 3rd series of te venture bros. (1st ep was 70 days old) & that went fine. Infact apart from pr0n i've never had any missing files.

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

:D No no, it's not the old pr0n :D

Yep, I'm using news.virginmedia.com as well.

It's basically anything I try and download and from any group. I remember a short time back I was getting 90 odd day retention but it turned out there was a fault which was quickly fixed once it was brought to VMs attention by someone from this forum!

So maybe you're just getting lucky. Either way, I'd keep it quiet ;) Although perhaps it's a bit late!

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

After my recent speed beef with Newsdemon, I stated to use VM usenet, for now they are great, I get top wack speed all of the time for free. However I will go to giganews once I have some dollar for the 200 days retention!

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

it's still very hit and miss - so it's not much use to me yet

however, just cancelled Giganews and started with Astraweb - 145+ retention/SSL/20 connections - all for just £ 5.86 p/mnth - with the promise that price will never go up

been using it for a few days - pretty impressed so far

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

I downloaded some 84-day-old files yesterday. Fully complete as well.

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

Sorry for going a little OT, but HSp8, just out of curiousty, how does that retention with Astraweb hold up when it's close to the 145 day mark? Are there many incompletes? I've been considering using them recently as they have a good price on the block plan. Need an alternative to VM!

Thanks in advance :)

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

about half way through downloading 800MB from Newzbin which is 144 days old - everything fine so far

edit - scrub that - insufficient files

d/loaded a 400MB tv episode that's 142 days old - that one is fine

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

Thanks vey much for reporting back. Perhaps a little hit and miss then but 142 days is better than most retention out there!

To go back on topic, perhaps the people downloading older files are downloading from groups where there aren't many files in the first place which makes it easier to give people access to older files.

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

are you sure they moved to easynews and not a highwinds reseller such as newshosting?

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

Tried to grab a Xbox 360 game that was 47 days old and half of it was incomplete. It is hit and miss.

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

same for me

from virginmedia.support.usenet

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

That's odd they were using easynews. That might explain the differences everybody is reporting.

Could everyone check where their vm usenet is coming from by opening the command prompt (goto run & type cmd) then type in netstat at the cmd prompt with only your vm usenet service connected & it'll list all your current connections.

---------- Post added at 20:19 ---------- Previous post was at 20:01 ----------

A quick google search reveals that Highwinds has brought easynews.

Also netstat now shows that my VM connection is going to servers from hwng.net, which I assume is another server in the highwinds group (they've recently purchased quite a few usenet providers inc easynews) as opposed to last week when netstat showed me as being connected to easynews's servers.

Only took a week for them to switch us to a new (& presumably crappier) usenet server, which explains why everyone seems to be getting rubbish retention now.

I'll run some new tests & see what i'm getting now...

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

From what I've read at the Easynews support forum and the support staff there seem a little cagey about this, EasyNews are using Highwinds in the same way VM are and haven't been bought by them, thats what I can gather from the vague replies I've seen posted by EN staff anyway.

Re: New VM Newsgroup tests for what is & isn't retained
 

if you do a lookup of the IP address it belongs to newshosting