Virgin and Usenet

Zen have their own Usenet swerver too, which has always been drama free. And
a nice telephone support service which works. I've bundled the telephone
service, which is something they recently started offering.

I'm not suggesting Zen is right for everyone's Retail broadband. It is a
B2B service and priced/structured/configured accordingly.

 

Well that's the real issue, isn't it. Well that and the blind fear of dodgy
content.

 

BE Value

Up to 12 meg download
Up to 1.3 meg upload
Unlimited usage
12 month contract.

https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/bevalue

 

LLU with BT as phone service provider.

I could switch it all over to Be* as they now offer a line rental option
but that would mean a contract of x months. I don't want that as my time in
this place is is indeterminate.

 

Be* is owned by O2's parent. If you have an O2 phone you can get their
branded version at a discount. Packages are different though.

 

I pay £14 for Be Value unlimited over LLU on a BT landline. Don't think
this package is an option now.

 

Nobody does LLU here so I'm stuck with resold BT shite no matter who I
go with.

 

I don't see why the ISPs can't just filter out the binary groups, or
delegate their usenet service to a provider that already does.
Still, if usenet is dying off slowly, they probably can't be arsed, or
simply lack the wit and imagination to do so.

 

Possibly. Depends if you rely on them for a TV & phone bundle with the
broadband. If you have the wires in situ then BT will welcome you back with
all sorts of incentives and LLU might be an option. If you don't have BT
wires, like the place I had in Cardiff, then the costs would be
prohibitive.

 

My ISP uses a non binary newsfeed. Never any troubles with it except when
first connecting after a power down and it wants more than one thread open
at a time and because of this it decides it suddenly wants to know my
password for no good reason but after that it is as good as gold.

 

What, like what mine does you mean?

But who would want a service provided from a parent company advertising
itself as Yorkshire born and bred when it is in fact a wholly owned
subsidiary of subsidiary of BT.

 

Bundled with phone. But Ben's port fix does the biz, for now at least.

 

In my case, using Pan, just
Edit->News Servers
select server: [Edit button enabled]
click Edit
type new port number
done

I'm sure it's similar for others - haven't tried sorting Agent yet
because the wires are plugged into this computer.

 

Couldn't figure it out. What's LLU?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-loop_unbundling

Be*/O2 have their kit in my BT exchange. My data is on the Be*/O2 network
until the final bit of copper wire from the exchange to my house which is
owned by BT.

 

Are you using Windows Live Mail by any chance? As you probably know, it's
what I use and I have the same "thing" happening. Slow to "connect" although
it's a permanent connection and I can be sitting waiting for quite some time
before anything happens. (I sometimes give F5 a couple of stabs which seems
to kick things back into gear). It always eventually manages to get the
headers, but they're not quick to grab. Posting is even worse as I *have* to
hit F5 or the posts just sit in my outbox (preference is for posting every
minute)

I think the problem is Live Mail, not Virgin, but I could be well wong, but
it happens when I use Thundernews too.

 

I think you'll find this is your problem (from
http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy.html )

"File sharing

We moderate the total volume of file sharing traffic on our network between
5pm and midnight on weekdays and midday and midnight on weekends. This
policy, which applies to all broadband packages, is restricted to Peer to
Peer ("P2P") applications and Newsgroups (which are commonly used to
distribute large amounts of data)

This policy does not impact any applications other than Peer to Peer and
Newsgroups, so things like watching iPlayer, online gaming, making calls via
Skype, downloading music tracks from iTunes or streaming them from Spotify
and sending an email or normal browsing are unaffected.

It's important to remember that these traffic management policies only apply
at peak times when speeds are most likely to be affected by people using
more than their fair share. Outside of peak times we do not manage traffc".

I dumped Virgin Broadband several months ago and the problem went away
immediately. Now a happy Be* customer

Paul

 

with a confused identity

 

These days, it's the only thing you really need to know when choosing
an ISP, but unfortunately the thing most people forget to mention.
Which is why when you go looking for people's experiences with a
particular ISP, you'll get loads saying they're wonderful, & loads
more saying they're complete shite.

The problem is all packages that run on the ISPs own kit (i.e. are LLU
or unbundled) are wonderful[1], & all packages that don't (i.e. are
just the BT ADSL package being rebadged & sold on) are unbelievably
bad.

[1] Sure some will traffic shape P2P/Usenet, but that's nothing
compared to how they cripple their rebadged BT offerings.

 

Well, it wasn't so similar in Agent after all. I ended up editing
AGENT.INI manually.