News announcement

[Paul Vigay]

As part of my monitoring of the news server, I was saddened to see that
this mornings quota (ie. over night) we're over 90% of our monthly capacity
- and that's in just two days.

Whether or not this is a random attack on newsgroups or someone intent on
sabotaging our newsfeed I've not determined yet, but as we're now within
4GB of being over our quota for the entire month, I've had to take the
rather unfortunate decision to temporarily suspend alt.* newsgroups - which
seemed to be where 90% of the traffic was going.

I'll have to keep a very close eye on the remaining newsgroups though, as
we're within a cats whisker of being suspended again! :-( :-(

Now I'm starting to see why most ISPs are dropping newsgroups! :-(

[Dr Peter Young]

On 16 Jul 2007 Paul Vigay

Post by Paul Vigay
As part of my monitoring of the news server, I was saddened to see that
this mornings quota (ie. over night) we're over 90% of our monthly capacity
- and that's in just two days.
Whether or not this is a random attack on newsgroups or someone intent on
sabotaging our newsfeed I've not determined yet, but as we're now within
4GB of being over our quota for the entire month, I've had to take the
rather unfortunate decision to temporarily suspend alt.* newsgroups - which
seemed to be where 90% of the traffic was going.

That's a pity, as I miss alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe

Is there any chance of restoring this alone (remembers Latin
grammatical construction, "Questions expecting the answer no".)

Post by Paul Vigay
I'll have to keep a very close eye on the remaining newsgroups though, as
we're within a cats whisker of being suspended again! :-( :-(
Now I'm starting to see why most ISPs are dropping newsgroups! :-(

Stick in there; we all greatly appreciate your efforts!

With best wishes,

Peter.

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Dr Peter Young
That's a pity, as I miss alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe
Is there any chance of restoring this alone (remembers Latin grammatical
construction, "Questions expecting the answer no".)

Well.... In theory I might be able to, but it probably requires some
investigation on the newserver config files.

Basically, the news server software allows white lists (ie. lists of
allowed newsgroups) but doesn't allow black lists so I can't say "allow all
alt.* newsgroups but disallow alt.binaries.dvd" for instance.

However, I think I can add individual newsgroups to the feed, but obviously
that makes for a very long config file if there are lots of individual
groups within a hierarchy.

Not being a subscriber myself, how much traffic normally goes through
alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe ?

[Dr Peter Young]

On 16 Jul 2007 Paul Vigay

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Dr Peter Young
That's a pity, as I miss alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe
Is there any chance of restoring this alone (remembers Latin grammatical
construction, "Questions expecting the answer no".)

Well.... In theory I might be able to, but it probably requires some
investigation on the newserver config files.

Nice if you can, but from my point of view it's a relatively low
priority. However, there are quite a few zfc people there too.

Post by Paul Vigay
Basically, the news server software allows white lists (ie. lists of
allowed newsgroups) but doesn't allow black lists so I can't say "allow all
alt.* newsgroups but disallow alt.binaries.dvd" for instance.
However, I think I can add individual newsgroups to the feed, but obviously
that makes for a very long config file if there are lots of individual
groups within a hierarchy.
Not being a subscriber myself, how much traffic normally goes through
alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe ?

Hugely variable; sometimes nothing for a week or so, then someone
posts something and a thread gets going. They're not usually as long
or multifarious as the threads on zfc, but getting that way.

I have a 30-day expiry on that group, and there are currently 166
messages in its box in MPro, so it's a relatively busy list (1).

With best wishes,

Peter.

(1) alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe members will recognise that
as an "Its/It's sentence! :-)

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Dr Peter Young
I have a 30-day expiry on that group, and there are currently 166
messages in its box in MPro, so it's a relatively busy list (1).

That sounds relatively low traffic to me. sci.script was receiving 22,000
messages per night last week!

I'll see what I can do.

Paul

[Tennant Stuart]

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Dr Peter Young
I have a 30-day expiry on that group, and there are currently 166
messages in its box in MPro, so it's a relatively busy list (1).

That sounds relatively low traffic to me. sci.script was receiving
22,000 messages per night last week!
I'll see what I can do.

Can you please whitelist my (low traffic) newsgroups as well?

Having to go without news for another month is diabolical. :(


Tennant

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Tennant Stuart
Can you please whitelist my (low traffic) newsgroups as well?

The problem is that we're so close to the 100% mark, that I'd rather have a
very small subset of newsgroups than none at all.

I explained the situation in a lengthy missive yesterday. However, I'm
currently working on another (backup) plan....

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Dr Peter Young
Nice if you can, but from my point of view it's a relatively low
priority. However, there are quite a few zfc people there too.

Try it now....

Paul

[Dr Peter Young]

On 16 Jul 2007 Paul Vigay

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Dr Peter Young
Nice if you can, but from my point of view it's a relatively low
priority. However, there are quite a few zfc people there too.

Try it now....

Fantastic! Give that man a medal.

Sorry I don't come to any of the shows, as I owe Paul quite a few
drinks by now.

With best wishes,

Peter.

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Dr Peter Young
Fantastic! Give that man a medal.
Sorry I don't come to any of the shows, as I owe Paul quite a few drinks
by now.

For reference, I've just put some graphs up on our news support page at
http://www.orpheusinternet.co.uk/support/news.html which show the current
bandwidth. I'll try to upload new graphs every couple of days or so, so
that anyone who's interested can see our current bandwidth.

Paul

[Bill (Adopt)]

Post by Paul Vigay
As part of my monitoring of the news server, I was saddened to see that
this mornings quota (ie. over night) we're over 90% of our monthly capacity
- and that's in just two days.

So where is all this excessive download coming from.

I had a large download of around 210 articles in alt.coffee
last night - which took ages and ages for the Orpheus server
to access and collate.. like around 30 minutes.. The 210
articles, of course, were around seven days worth. That
doesn't seem to much to my way of thinking...

In fact quite light ..2100+ for seven days would be high
use, but not 'over-use'...

Post by Paul Vigay
Whether or not this is a random attack on newsgroups or someone intent on
sabotaging our newsfeed I've not determined yet, but as we're now within
4GB of being over our quota for the entire month, I've had to take the
rather unfortunate decision to temporarily suspend alt.* newsgroups - which
seemed to be where 90% of the traffic was going.

I thought you had determined this - and were looking at a
particular source...

Post by Paul Vigay
I'll have to keep a very close eye on the remaining newsgroups though, as
we're within a cats whisker of being suspended again! :-( :-(

Have you managed to identify the 'culprit' yet? After all,
somebody must be accessing the download. Is it not identifiable?
I doubt it's from 'outside', if only because to be so would make
your present security arrangements seem extraordinarily precarious
- and somehow I doubt that's really the case!

Post by Paul Vigay
Now I'm starting to see why most ISPs are dropping newsgroups! :-(

Are they? ..but too many IPs still do run them as part their
service...

Those that don't usually have a much cheaper basic charge for
their less comprehensive service ..(or, like BT, provide lots
of additional services that may, or may not, be useful to an
individual customer)...

Is is it not possible to put a block on the high use groups.
You certainly be correct to block out groups that stream c.
22000 articles at a time - such as your sci.crypt. ..which,
being a 'sci' group should also easily come under the Usenet
rules ..as indeed should the 'alt' groups as well - they are
both part of the Usenet 'mainstream'.

However...

For my part the important groups that I suddenly find missing once
again are:

alt.coffee around 30/40 a day, normally.
Google label it a 'medium' use
group.

alt.missing-kids perhaps 4 or 5 a month.

alt.satellite.tv.europe 10/20 a day, sometimes less..

alt.film-festivals
alt.film-festivals.sundance together about 10 a month including
junk...

sci.space.science about 10 a year
rec.aviation.misc about 10 only every ten years,
for some inexplicable reason!

None of this lot can be labelled excessive use ..and none are
binary (graphic) groups...

So ..the question is do you believe yourself capable of providing
the Usenet service - or is it now costing you just too much..?

..and, if so, is there another model that may be used -

ie.. provide a list of all the (100,000+) Usenet groups
and include a monitored method whereby your customers can
attach their newsgroup request to the Orpheus list..

...especially your many graphic intense anonymous kook and spook
customers..?

(Remember, Usenet is still, despite Google's attempt to subvert it,
the main public Internet interchange)...

Bill ZFC

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Bill (Adopt)
So where is all this excessive download coming from.

The night before last's was alt.binaries.dvd so presumably one of our
customers was downloading entire DVDs. I don't have a problem with this,
but there are *much* more effective ways of downloading DVDs than via
newsgroups - such as BitTorrent and LimeWire etc.

Post by Bill (Adopt)
In fact quite light ..2100+ for seven days would be high use, but not
'over-use'...

It's not article number but actual data size, so 2000 1K messages would be
less of a problem than 2 or 3 100MB messages.

Post by Bill (Adopt)
I thought you had determined this - and were looking at a particular
source...

It's difficult to determine a particular source due to it being like
looking for a needle in a haystack, and I can't really spend all month
going through logs line by line, and there doesn't really seem to be any
decent log analyser software available. It would be easier if you could get
something like Webalizer for newgroup logs. I would write some, but again
it's getting the time! :-(

I do have the IP address of whoever was attempting to download DVDs, so
I've asked BT to trace this at the moment. I only keep a record of those
people who have static IP addresses.

Post by Bill (Adopt)
Have you managed to identify the 'culprit' yet? After all, somebody
must be accessing the download. Is it not identifiable? I doubt it's

If it's one of our customers (and the DVD downloading one is), then yes I
can identify them (if BT get back to me of course), but there are other
ways the newsgroup can be abused, and the sci.crypt method is one of them.
Someone, somewhere in the world (Russia we think) is spamming sci.crypt
with approx 20,000 random messages a night. Some of these messages are each
10K long - so you can see it's a *huge* amount of data. This was *one*
newsgroup I identified, mainly because I happened to subscribe to
sci.crypt. However, I only subscribe to around 15 newsgroups, out of the
full 110,000 newsgroups - so for all I know someone could be doing the same
to any number of other newsgroups that I don't know about.

Our own newsserver is much more efficient than the old Argonet one, so the
way our news server works is that it caches news articles for those
newsgroups that people request. This means that in theory, if two or more
of our customers subscribe to the same newsgroup, the server will cache the
articles and not have to refetch them from the upstream news server until
some new articles arrive. This saves bandwidth enormously, which is why (if
you look at the graphs on the newsgroup support page at
http://www.orpheusinternet.co.uk/support/news.html ) you'll see a maximum
of 10 connections. This is not 10 customers, but 10 connections from our
own news server.

Post by Bill (Adopt)
Are they? ..but too many IPs still do run them as part their service...

Yes. Pretty much all large ISPs have now dropped newsgroups - such as BT,
Tiscali, Orange, Talk Talk, Virgin, etc etc. Only some of the smaller ones
which peer from Pipex (like Argonet used to) still offer them. Pipex in
turn get their feed from Giganews.
I've cut out the middle man (Pipex) so I buy my feed direct from Giganews -
but it's not cheap. Although, spread over our customers, it works out as
excellent value for money for our customers, as it probably costs people
less than 10p a month as part of their subscription.

Post by Bill (Adopt)
Is is it not possible to put a block on the high use groups.

No. You can't block newsgroups. You can only supply a list of newsgroups
you wish to carry. This is why it's harder to remove individual newsgroups.
I can only make the list longer so instead of saying we with to carry alt.*
I have to individually specify alt.coffee for example.

Post by Bill (Adopt)
alt.film-festivals
alt.film-festivals.sundance together about 10 a month including

However, those could be configured in a single rule by allowing
alt.film-festivals.* but as you can see, if there are lots of individual
newsgroups, the list can start getting rather difficult to manage.

Post by Bill (Adopt)
sci.space.science about 10 a year

Again, if there are several space related newsgroups I could probably
define a catchall such as sci.space.* but of course, if there was a
sub-group that I required blocking (as an example, not in this particular
case), then I'd have to go back to listing individual groups.

It would be really nice if you could just specify which newsgroups to block
- but you can't.

Post by Bill (Adopt)
rec.aviation.misc about 10 only every ten years,

rec.* is available anyway. It's only alt.* and sci.* which have been
temporarily removed.

Post by Bill (Adopt)
So ..the question is do you believe yourself capable of providing
the Usenet service - or is it now costing you just too much..?
..and, if so, is there another model that may be used -

Actually, I don't need a different model. The model we have generally works
very well. Until this month, our maximum ever (in the two years we've had a
news feed) usage was no more than 40%, usually averaging 25% a month.

It was only in the past couple of weeks usage shot up to over 100%.

The reason there's a problem at the moment is possibly down to me - because
we've never been over our quota before, I was looking to extend our quota
temporarily, paying a single penalty for one month excessive use. So, I
extended our quota to 200%.

However, that was when I found that in one night we went up to 150% quota,
so my additional cost would be used up in 2 or 3 days instead of the rest
of the month, so I took the decision to revert my change and change the
quota back to 100% to prevent any more usage. This is when we ended up with
two weeks with no news until the end of the month (actually the 15th, as
it's billing month, not calendar month).

When the 15th came round (Sunday), I noticed that instead of being billed
for the amount we were over (actually a relief), our quota was back to the
usual (100%) but the excessive bandwidth had been 'carried forward', so
instead of starting the month on 0%, we started this month on around 48%
usage, which then shot up again.

Now I know how Giganews' bandwidth allocation works, I won't attempt to
increase our bandwidth again, which means it will simply stop at 100% and
we may lose the newsfeed again until the 15th of next month. However, that
will ensure that we start next month with a bandwidth usage of 0%, which
means that everything should be back to normal again.

I've now got logging in place - so I can detect if people are downloading
vast amounts of data (such as alt.binaries.dvd) as this not only affects
the bandwidth of our Giganews feed, but is also affecting the bandwidth our
servers use in the London data centre - as our server has to download the
same amount of data from Giganews in the first place.

We're currenly (as of about 10 minutes ago) running at 96.02%, which is
within a cats whisker of being blocked again, but if I can block a few high
traffic newsgroups to make the remaining 4% last as long as possible, then
we may get closer to the 15th of next month without losing news again.

Anyway, hopefully this gives a more detailed breakdown of the problem.

Paul

[Russell Hafter News]

In article

Lines: 151 Bytes: 8856

I am sure that this would have been interesting!

How can I get hold of the article?

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Russell Hafter News

Lines: 151 Bytes: 8856

I am sure that this would have been interesting!
How can I get hold of the article?

I presume you're using NewsHound? If so, I also presume you've configured
NewsHound to only download 'short' messages.

You need to edit the "GlobalRule" file inside NewsHound's choices
("Servers..." from the iconbar menu).

[Russell Hafter News]

In article

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Russell Hafter News

Lines: 151 Bytes: 8856

I am sure that this would have been interesting!
How can I get hold of the article?

I presume you're using NewsHound? If so, I also presume
you've configured NewsHound to only download 'short'
messages.
You need to edit the "GlobalRule" file inside NewsHound's
choices ("Servers..." from the iconbar menu).

I am using the default "GlobalRule" file (or at least the
one that came with my copies of Newshound).

And it seems to be set to get header only for anything
bigger than 8k, get header only for anything posted to over
5 groups and to kill anything posted to more than 10 groups

I have now changed it to >20k

[Gillian Bobbett]

Post by Russell Hafter News
In article

Lines: 151 Bytes: 8856

I am sure that this would have been interesting!
How can I get hold of the article?

If you are using Pluto all you need to do is go to Message-Fetch Body and
the full message will appear next time you download.

Gillian

[Russell Hafter News]

Post by Gillian Bobbett

Post by Russell Hafter News
In article
Paul Vigay

Lines: 151 Bytes: 8856

I am sure that this would have been interesting!
How can I get hold of the article?

If you are using Pluto all you need to do is go to
Message-Fetch Body and the full message will appear next
time you download.

Thanks.

In the end I told newshound to download the last 10
articles.

It seemed clever enough to realise that I had downloaded 9
of them and got the one needed, so I did not need to use
Pluto's delete duplicates function, which I expected to
need.

[Bill (Adopt)]

Post by Russell Hafter News

Post by Gillian Bobbett

Post by Russell Hafter News
In article
Paul Vigay

Lines: 151 Bytes: 8856

I am sure that this would have been interesting!
How can I get hold of the article?

If you are using Pluto all you need to do is go to
Message-Fetch Body and the full message will appear next
time you download.

Thanks.
In the end I told newshound to download the last 10
articles.
It seemed clever enough to realise that I had downloaded 9
of them and got the one needed, so I did not need to use
Pluto's delete duplicates function, which I expected to
need.

Yes.. Newshound does surprise at times.. ;))

It's possible that the 8k (or less) limit in Newshound's
config files is a very early limit as set by Joseph Heenan
when first authoring the application many years ago - in
times before dsl downloads - and when he was scattering
to the winds as part of the testing procedures...

In these days of megabyte singular web-pages and authored
business letters, a 20k text article limit might still be
considered rather low - at least for some FAQs and other
documents...

It's hard to know quite where to set a limit without losing
vital business and personal information - but reloading
when it becomes obvious that something of interest is
missing is one eas(ier) method of regaining that info...

Bill ZFC

[Russell Hafter News]

Post by Bill (Adopt)
In these days of megabyte singular web-pages and authored
business letters,

These do not come via Usenet, though.

Post by Bill (Adopt)
a 20k text article limit might still be considered rather
low - at least for some FAQs and other documents...

Usenet FAQs are all assigned to Pluto's bin anyway.
:-)

Post by Bill (Adopt)
It's hard to know quite where to set a limit without
losing vital business and personal information - but
reloading when it becomes obvious that something of
interest is missing is one eas(ier) method of regaining
that info...

Mail is different:

POPStar is set to ask if I want to download something bigger
than 12k. Most of the stuff that is is spam, viruses etc.,
though I do get the occasional genuine and massive document
by e-mail.

[Bill (Adopt)]

Post by Russell Hafter News

Post by Bill (Adopt)
a 20k text article limit might still be considered rather
low - at least for some FAQs and other documents...

Usenet FAQs are all assigned to Pluto's bin anyway.
:-)

So therefore, as you have no Usenet needs, you
are not bothered by a lack of knowledge and an
inability to discuss using this medium... ;))

Understandable - it would be amusing to receive
a bank charge letter for your latest overdraft,
or a booking via free.lola.sweetie.die.die.die...

..not impossible, mind.. ;'))

Post by Russell Hafter News

Post by Bill (Adopt)
It's hard to know quite where to set a limit without
losing vital business and personal information - but
reloading when it becomes obvious that something of
interest is missing is one eas(ier) method of regaining
that info...

POPStar is set to ask if I want to download something bigger
than 12k. Most of the stuff that is is spam, viruses etc.,
though I do get the occasional genuine and massive document
by e-mail.

Good. You obviously have your setup doing that
which you want. Not all make the same business
plan...

The original authors of Newsagent made the same,
for their purposes, many, many years ago. Many
carry this limit forward without realising it
exists, such is the less than immediately friendly
complexity of the configure file(s) ..as you have
recently discovered.. :))

Bill ZFC

[Russell Hafter News]

Post by Russell Hafter News

Post by Bill (Adopt)
a 20k text article limit might still be considered
rather low - at least for some FAQs and other
documents...

Usenet FAQs are all assigned to Pluto's bin anyway.
:-)

So therefore, as you have no Usenet needs, you are not
bothered by a lack of knowledge and an inability to
discuss using this medium... ;))

No, but the half dozen Newsgroups to which I subscribe all
ban attachments, so 20k of plain text is quite a lot.

This was the first time ever (in about six tyears) I had
seen this feature of Newshound in action AND considered that
I had missed out on something interesting.

Understandable - it would be amusing to receive a bank
charge letter for your latest overdraft, or a booking
via free.lola.sweetie.die.die.die...

Have the banks even heard of usenet?

[Paul Vigay]

In article <***@walkingingermany.invalid>,
Russell Hafter News <***@walkingingermany.invalid> wrote:
[Snip]

Post by Russell Hafter News
Have the banks even heard of usenet?

I sometimes wonder if they've even heard of the internet. Most of them
certainly don't know how to use it properly!

[Bill (Adopt)]

Post by Paul Vigay
[Snip]

Post by Russell Hafter News
Have the banks even heard of usenet?

I sometimes wonder if they've even heard of the internet. Most of them
certainly don't know how to use it properly!

..perhaps too busy attempting to 'net their competitors
customers?! Gee, it's a tough world at the nineteenth!

;))

[Bill (Adopt)]

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Bill (Adopt)
So where is all this excessive download coming from.

Major snip merely to save excessive quoting ..(for the
supporting articles please refer to newslines above)...

Post by Paul Vigay
The night before last's was alt.binaries.dvd so presumably one of our
customers was downloading entire DVDs. I don't have a problem with this,
but there are *much* more effective ways of downloading DVDs than via
newsgroups - such as BitTorrent and LimeWire etc.

[..]

Post by Paul Vigay
...same amount of data from Giganews in the first place.
We're currenly (as of about 10 minutes ago) running at 96.02%, which is
within a cats whisker of being blocked again, but if I can block a few high
traffic newsgroups to make the remaining 4% last as long as possible, then
we may get closer to the 15th of next month without losing news again.
Anyway, hopefully this gives a more detailed breakdown of the problem.

Yes :)) ..and thank you for your prompt response, Paul.

However ..(no, it's not quite a 'but')..! ;))

I'm still unclear as to why an individual whom you believe
to be a customer of Orpheus should appear to remain, even
if carrying a BT address, somehow outside your sphere of
influence?

Your claim that 'he' is hoovering the available bandwith by
downloading entire binary group DVDs to the detriment of
the rest of your customers - and your supplementary statement
that you are happy for 'him' to do this - is not entirely clear
to me...?

Do you really need to send a message to BT to identify this
customer? (Unless, of course, 'he' is the Chairman of BT
out to destroy Orpheus with his co-conspirators) ..and don't
ever imagine that such cannot happen! ;'))

My simplistic understanding is that, as the boss of your
Orpheun operation, you should be able to approach this
customer yourself and outline the problem - including your
sensible solutions in downloading such bandwidth-hogging
content outside the Usenet heirarchy.

If that does not meet with an immediately encouraging response,
then is it really that difficult to ask your SysAdmin to put a
'stop' on the binary.* groups - perhaps arbitarily albeit only
temporarily until equilibrium is restored...?

Incidentally (!) ..are you sure about the Usenet heirarchies
as you present them in your download statistic 'page' on
the Orpheus website..?

..talk*..? Why not add the old-timer free.* to that mainstream
- mind that might be getting a little too close to the *talk
homebase! ;))

..as for alt.* - my understanding is that this very broad and
well maintained (mostly sensible) heirarchy has actually been
part of the mainstream seven and then eight for almost a
generation now...!

However ..nit-picking aside...

We, your Orpheun Customers who have been suffering the only
very recent unreliability of the Orpheus Usenet download may
like to be made aware that we all can - for around 10? euros
or less (and even less in gbp) per quarter, can have our own
individual newsfeeds spanning Usenet from the very same
Giganews that supplies Orpheus - as well as from a number
of other feeds from alternative major backbones and university
feeds at an equally cheap, nominal, charge.

There are indeed a number of free services available which,
as the above minimum charge services, merely need a quick
'google', or a short plea within comp.sys.acorn.misc (yayaya)
to identify - or even a passing Chika to explain in very simple
terms. (These services are not at all similar to the failed
one that plagued ZFC a few months ago). Not that these services
need supplant Orpheus - but they may be a real help in times of
crisis...

(The free ones usually need an automatic two-minute sign-up
similar to that of ZFC-Chat - and can be very reliable
alternatives if and when Orpheus is finding it hard to cope
sensibly with the excessive demands of a freequently bandwith
-hogging customer).

..a thought, or two...

:))

Bill ZFC

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Bill (Adopt)
Do you really need to send a message to BT to identify this
customer?

Yes. Unless you have a static IP address, then the connection is handled at
the local exchange and you're dynamically assigned an IP address. I know
that the IP address belongs to our 'block' so to speak, but I don't know
which customer logged in. I need to request this information from BT.

Post by Bill (Adopt)
My simplistic understanding is that, as the boss of your Orpheun
operation, you should be able to approach this customer yourself and
outline the problem - including your sensible solutions in downloading
such bandwidth-hogging content outside the Usenet heirarchy.

Indeed, and that's exactly what I can do, once I've identified who is it.

Post by Bill (Adopt)
Incidentally (!) ..are you sure about the Usenet heirarchies as you
present them in your download statistic 'page' on the Orpheus website..?

Yes. I've listed the main "usenet 8" hierarchies.

Post by Bill (Adopt)
We, your Orpheun Customers who have been suffering the only very recent
unreliability of the Orpheus Usenet download may like to be made aware
that we all can - for around 10? euros or less (and even less in gbp)
per quarter, can have our own individual newsfeeds spanning Usenet from
the very same Giganews that supplies Orpheus - as well as from a number
of other feeds from alternative major backbones and university feeds at
an equally cheap, nominal, charge.

Giganews will charge individuals from £5 per month (not quarter) a
low-usage news feed. However, you'll also need either newsgroup
authentication and/or a static IP address, so not all RISC OS users will be
able to access, as not all software does authenticated news.

Post by Bill (Adopt)
(The free ones usually need an automatic two-minute sign-up similar to
that of ZFC-Chat - and can be very reliable alternatives if and when
Orpheus is finding it hard to cope sensibly with the excessive demands
of a freequently bandwith -hogging customer).

Well, I'm assuming it's only for a limited interim period that our
newsgroup restrictions will be in force. I explained why we only had
limited bandwidth this month, simply because the amount we went over was
carried forward from last month. By not increasing the bandwidth this
month, I can ensure that next month (and subsequent months) we get a full
quota and not half quota.

[Richard Travers]

Post by Paul Vigay
Giganews will charge individuals from £5 per month (not quarter) a
low-usage news feed.

Teranews provide a free feed for 'low users' (free, that is, apart from a
very small set-up charge).

R

[Tennant Stuart]

Post by Paul Vigay
As part of my monitoring of the news server, I was saddened to see that
this mornings quota (ie. over night) we're over 90% of our monthly
capacity - and that's in just two days.
Whether or not this is a random attack on newsgroups or someone intent on
sabotaging our newsfeed I've not determined yet, but as we're now within
4GB of being over our quota for the entire month, I've had to take the
rather unfortunate decision to temporarily suspend alt.* newsgroups -
which seemed to be where 90% of the traffic was going.

This is dreadful!

Can we at least still post *to* these banned newsgroups?

Post by Paul Vigay
I'll have to keep a very close eye on the remaining newsgroups though, as
we're within a cats whisker of being suspended again! :-( :-(
Now I'm starting to see why most ISPs are dropping newsgroups! :-(

So who's hosting all of the posts? Only a few are Google Grouped.


Tennant

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Tennant Stuart
Can we at least still post *to* these banned newsgroups?

Luckily, although the news server doesn't allow me to blacklist specific
newsgroups, it does allow me to control which newsgroups are read from, or
posted to, independently.

I'll have to check whether the bandwidth quota includes SENT or just
RECEIVED data. If sent data doesn't count towards our quota then, yes, I
can allow posting to /all/ groups.

Post by Tennant Stuart
So who's hosting all of the posts? Only a few are Google Grouped.

All newsgroups are carried by Giganews, whom we get our main feed from. The
full details were posted in my lengthy missive of yesterday, and some
graphs are on our usenet support page at
http://www.orpheusinternet.co.uk/support/news.html