Newsgroup access - Pipex / Opal / whatever

On 1/6/10 I was "upgraded" to an ISP provider called Opal (formerly
Pipex then Pipex Business). This seems to be part of a huge grouping
of businesses bought by Talk Talk including Pipex, Tiscali, Bulldog
and various other ISPs.

Since the upgrade I have lost my newsgroup access. Most of the
technical and customer support people have no clue what usenet
actually is so you start at a massive disadvantage of having to
educate the supplier's staff before they can begin to work out what
you are talking about. Having spent inordinate amounts of time on the
phone I was assured that the service has not been withdrawn but that
there is a technical issue with the nntp server. Naturally enough
this does not show up any service status webpage!

Is anyone else on ukrm mad enough to still to be with Pipex (or
rebranded option) and have they lost their usenet access? If you
still have your service and have been upgraded anyone care to share
what the settings are?

I know IDNET is the supplier of choice - do they provide a news
server? I couldn't see anything obvious on their website.

As a final option any recommendations for a decent usenet feed -
ideally free? I suspect the real answer is that the service has been
scrapped but they haven't deigned to tell anyone.

 

Not free but I think 10 euros/yr for news.individual.net - good reliable
service.

 

First thing you need to find out is whether they've killed their nntp
server or killed port 119 access. If it's the latter, you'll need to
find a usenet provider who lets you use different ports, which rules
out individual.net. eternal-september.org lets you use port 80 & is
free & mostly reliable. Just don't resend any posts that don't show up
immediately or return an error. Apparently they sometimes take a while,
although I've never had that problem.

 

news.eternal-september.org

Works for me, an ex Pipex user now on O2.

 

eternal-september provide a range of options including SSL on a non standard
port which is often rather handy

If you choose ZEN as your internet provider they have an excellent txt
usenet server which I use here from work. Far more consistent than e-s

Or $2.99/month will buy you a Jade plan on Giganews

 

IDNet are great. I don't know who's got the 'free month's sub for a
recommendation' list right now.

Again, as others have said, just use the German Server. Ten euros a
year is nothing to a man of your wealth. It works out at just over
tuppence a day.

 

I think you might find the information you have been given is correct
in this case. I'm with Freedom2Surf who are also now part of Opal.
They got rid of their own news server some time ago, but
news.freedom2surf.net now points to a Giganews server which I can
access for free (logging in with the same username and password that I
enter in my ADSL router).

However I haven't been able to log in to that news server since some
time last week - I get "481 Access Denied". I finally got a reply from
support today which stated "There is an issue affecting a number of
users and it has been escalated to the appropriate department. A fix
should be in place by COB on Monday."

So I'd suggest you make do with Google (or find another server
temporarily) until next Tuesday, then try again.

David.

 

Ah - that makes some sort of sense. I have been getting the 481 error
message. Waiting until Monday is a heck of a wait though - the server
will have been down for a week. I guess this either shows (a) it's a
serious fault (b) news is not a high priority or (c) Opal / Talk
Talk / Pipex / blah blah don't know their systems very well. This is
the worst outage I've ever had in many years of being with Pipex.

All the other suggestions are much appreciated for a back up /
alternative provider. I'll see if I get the same message from support
and whether the service actually returns.

 

b, a, c in that order

b may also be related to d: The bloke that knows the news server is not
back until Monday.


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http://news.albasani.net/

 

+1 for news.individual.net - well worth the money.

I've not tried these

freenews.netfront.net
news.aioe.org

but when we were discussing this a week or so back I noted them and
put them into Agent as backup. One them has a limit (I doubt you'll
exceed it) on the number of posts made.

 

Snip

Thank you.
I, too, am a victim of the vicissitudes of Pipex but I am now back to
full on lurk mode as you have solved a problem that "they" could not.
Cheers,
DP.