I've had no problems downloading 100s of Gig via zipmanager via Easynews (except networking problems fixed by correcting the route is indicated in first post )
I download zips from
http://zip.members.easynews.com:81/...
And I get slightly better performance via
https://secure.zip.members.easynews.com:81/...
(Dont know why, as there is more overhead. Maybe the secure server is twiddling it's thumbs most of the time)
Never download anything via port 80.
Downloading via NNTP is 25% slower (all else being equal), and if you are on NTL 10meg it uses more of your download limit..(I'm on 2meg)
After I went HTTP, I would never go back to NNTP, simply because you have to download more bytes to get the same files , although Easynews allow for this, NTL dont , so if you are on a capped service you are wasting some of your total using NNTP. I used to have the full NNTP monty with multple XNews windows etc. etc. but now I just use multiple instances of wget from the command line.. Which I fire off from the Global Search page..
Lordy