Not maxxing out newsgroups any more

[big_dirk]

Hi all,

I've got 20Mb, and have always managed to max out my 20Mb connection when downloading via SSL on port 443. All of a sudden a few weeks ago I have started not getting much over 10Mb, and often a really tiny speed.

I've tried changing the port to 5563 and another one but still get the same.

I haven't changed any of my infrastructure, and don't know of any faults in my area.

Could anyone advise on what they may think is wrong? Does anyone else have recent issues with downloading from usenet? My next step is to run down my news account (blocknews) then sign up to one which serves news over SSL on port 80 to try that.

[MovedGoalPosts]

I presume that's a fypo and you meant port 563.

I also assume you are downloading outside of the STM hours?

Anything else on your computer that might have changed such as antivirus or firewall settings, rather than jumping to the conclusion Virgin Media have done something devious?

[big_dirk]

I presume that's a fypo and you meant port 563.

I also assume you are downloading outside of the STM hours?

Anything else on your computer that might have changed such as antivirus or firewall settings, rather than jumping to the conclusion Virgin Media have done something devious?

yes sorry a typo I am currently using 443 for example and get the same.

I am on about STM and outside STM hours, I used to max my connection even inside STM hours though until I hit a few GBs whatever their cap is.

I honestly don't think it will be my computer as it's a linux box just running SABNZBD and XBMC which I don't ever update, no firewall involved.

[cook1984]

Confirmed, I am on 10 meg and currently getting about 1 meg from Astraweb via SSL. I'm logging a fault with VM.

[MovedGoalPosts]

I'm not seeing any problems with port 443 using Supernews SSL on 50meg with the current SABnzbd, outside of STM hours, but then I usually do most downloading later at night, and tend to only do a few gig every fortnight or so. Your 20meg might be getting treated more restrictively, especially if your access is a bit more frequent?

Might be worth looking at how many connections you are throwing out at once, in case that is overloading something. Even on 50 meg I'm finding 8 is plenty. I know everyone assumes linux is "safe", but surely no firewall is a risk?

[big_dirk]

I'm not seeing any problems with port 443 using Supernews SSL on 50meg with the current SABnzbd, outside of STM hours, but then I usually do most downloading later at night, and tend to only do a few gig every fortnight or so. Your 20meg might be getting treated more restrictively, especially if your access is a bit more frequent?

Might be worth looking at how many connections you are throwing out at once, in case that is overloading something. Even on 50 meg I'm finding 8 is plenty. I know everyone assumes linux is "safe", but surely no firewall is a risk?

I will give it another test out of STM hours.

5 connections, I thought that sounded fairly conservative? Do you think I should try more connections? I don't really understand NG connections tbh. I can't see why I'd need more than 1.

Regarding Linux, I've got my VM supplied router in the way of the nasty folks out there on the web, which has a firewall on it

[MovedGoalPosts]

When you are downloading each connection is only pulling one file at a time. That was fine for text, but I presume you are pulling somethings that will be made up of lots of files that SABnzbd is then reconstructing into the larger "document" once it has all been leeched. In that case you want a few connections, rather than just one so that each can overlap. See if there is a speed change with say 3 or 5 and perhaps experiment, just don't have too many otherwise they will all cancel each other out.

I assume you are on a wired rather than wireless connection to your router. Wireless could throw up all sorts of other issues with interference.

[cook1984]

For some reason my post did not appear, but basically if you are not maxing out your broadband try opening more connections. Bandwidth is shared between connections for all users where the bottleneck is, so having more connections gets you a bigger slice of the cake.

On 20 meg 16 connections should be fine.

[big_dirk]

For some reason my post did not appear, but basically if you are not maxing out your broadband try opening more connections. Bandwidth is shared between connections for all users where the bottleneck is, so having more connections gets you a bigger slice of the cake.

On 20 meg 16 connections should be fine.

Fair comment, but I've seen 20Mb achieved at certain periods of time throughout the download.

I've set it to 16 connections and next time I need to dl something i'll check, and hopefully I'll remember to update the thread. (I bet you won't be able to sleep until you know my downloads are up to speed! :))

[SnoopZ]

No problems here using port 553 and 5 connections, i always max 30 meg out on http://www.supernews.com/super-special/

[big_dirk]

Hi all,

I'm still having the problem. I've tried upping the number of connections as per the suggestion but for instance tonight i've not surpassed 1.3MB/s, and am mainly getting <1MB/s. Any ideas or is it time to call VM? (I really dont like ringing them)

[keepitretro]

It appears vm have started shaping ssl port 443. (Astraweb btw), but it seems to be on off
there does not appear to be any pattern to it at the moment,

Please hurry up bt infinity!!!!!

[AV8TOR]

Might I suggest those of you that are having problems on astra simply change from the European servers to the American servers.
Right now 9.15pm well after any STM has finished i'm only able to get 3 > 4 Mb/s from ssl-eu.astraweb.com on either SSL port, whilst ssl-us.astraweb.com is giving me 31.5Mb/s from my 30Mb line

[big_dirk]

Thanks for that AV8tor and keepitretro. Is a surefire solution to this to use a NG provider who can provide SSL over port 80?

[keepitretro]

Think there's 3 ssl servers with astra, been using the ssl news one i think its called.

not eu or us...

That seems ok at the moment.

And port 23 non ssl seems ok as well....

Pain in the.........superhub.

---------- Post added at 21:42 ---------- Previous post was at 21:36 ----------

Thanks for that AV8tor and keepitretro. Is a surefire solution to this to use a NG provider who can provide SSL over port 80?

Maybe for the time being,

but for how long who knows!

The way they are going soon all the ports may be throttled!!!

As i get the impression vm hate newsgroups.

[Alto]

I thought VM were playing silly buggers up until recently, but I was wrong!

I'd noticed my Astraweb connection speeds were all over the place, even in the middle of the night when I used to be able to max things out on my 20MB connection. In fact it was this that made me think that there was a problem with my pc rather then VM or Astraweb. (I use XP on a 5 year old Inspiron laptop).

I noticed that AVG's process VSMON.EXE was eating up a lot of CPU and when I disabled AVG, my usenet DL speed shot up to a healthy 2200KB/s, with just an occasional dip. I think VSMON must have been checking every connection for viruses etc - which obviously resulted in big problems with 10 or 15 parallel connections!

For anybody experiencing speed problems, and who uses AVG (especially the big upgrade a few months ago) it might be worth checking your connection using, say windows firewall to see if you get as much of a speed improvement as I did!

[SnoopZ]

I wouldn't use AVG if it was the only free antivirus available, not withthe current version anyway.

I recommend Avast as an alternative, but make sure you turn off scanning of newsgroups in the mail shield options as this makes for a smoother download.