I'm about to sign up for Namesco/NDO Home 250 and wondered if anyones
got any experience of their usenet newsservice ?

My current ISP - Firefly uses a third party - Giganews which loses 10%
of posts.

--
John

John wrote:

If you don't get answers here, you might try checking the web
site www.ADSLguide.org (might be worth mentioning what you
want from the news service - binaries ? how many GB/month ?)

John <me@privacy.net> wrote:

They say that the news service is provided by PlusNet. Any comments ?

John

Peter M <us-mail@rocketmail.com> wrote:

Thanks Peter, I used that site to short list NDO, but I thought that
it might be better to ask on usenet ;-)

I didn't receive your post on the pile of shite that is GigaNews (used
by FireFly ISP) until I saw it on Google and forced a download to my
newsreader with the message ID. I've been using usenet for 10 years
and it aint me.....

No binaries, say 60Mb per month.

John

In message <rcaru1ld320mnbgfol9975f97cohr7a04g@4ax.com>, John
<me@privacy.net> writes
For non-binary newsfeed have a look at news.individual.net - only 7.5
quid a year, reliable and fast.
--
Paul McGuinness

John wrote:
users goes to NDO and whether they pass them on to their users.

I have little that's good to say about Plus.Net in the same
sentence as "news service". I have at least two other accounts
with other services, if that's enough of an indicator. They did
suggest some wish to provide a great service but there's little I
have seen in the past 18 months to convince me that it's getting
anywhere near the reliability of other services. I've suggested
they outsource the binaries to make the text-only service work
reliably, but the staff tend to use web-based forums for chat
and don't respond very much within their own newsgroups (yes
they do respond, from time to time, but studiously avoid some
questions, or maybe questioners!) Peter M.

Try the Usenet 'service status' on http://usergroup.plus.net/

Paul McGuinness <paul@panton.demon.co.uk> wrote:

Thanks - I know of that one - I used it before they started charging,
it's by far and away the best I've used, the filters are good as they
manage to blackhole a lot of the spam.

If the Plusnet service (used by Namesco/NDO) is any good then there
should be no need for me to use a 3rd party service though.

Terra News appears to be another useful option one off fee of £3.95
for a 50Mb/day limit.

John

John wrote:

Further to your comment about them using news from Plus.Net I
just tried ringing NDO/Namesco: their network status page at
www.names.co.uk/network/ or www.ndo.com/network/ shows only
the standard servers I'd expect for the hosting firm Namesco
and no status indicators for any ADSL/dial-up/USENET facility.

Spoke to someone at Tech Support (24x7, 0845 number, good start!)
but he was unable to answer whether there was a news server, both
"NNTP" and "USENET" were as good as Russian to him and he was only
able to offer me the phone number for their Sales/Customer Support
people (who are not working at the weekend, not even today). So
I have no answer from NDO/Namesco about it, which is rather poor.

It made me wonder how people get answers to tech support queries
(for example, "What's the IP address of your NNTP server ?") if
the Tech Support people are involved in Namesco hosting/domains,
and know nothing about the ISP they bought last year. Peter M.

On Sat, 11 Feb 2006 08:43:31 +0000, John <me@privacy.net> wrote:

Plusnet recommend a separate News Server for text based Newsgroups ie
news.plus.net.

My binaries have the News Server as: usenet.plus.net

Before splitting them like this I used to find that text Newsgroups
were slow to pick up the messages. Now there is a definite
improvement.

Text based groups are as you would expect intact (the proviso being
that all posts appear to be present but other than using another
server and matching the messages I cannot be 100% sure).

Binaries are a different matter. There is no doubt that since I first
signed up 3 years ago there has been a big improvement. On occasions
they are all present but too often there are parts missing in nearly
every post. I now supplement binaries with bought in blocks of
downloads with the likes of Octanews and Astraweb. They are cheap so
if money is tight you can use them selectively when Plusnet postings
are incomplete.

I must admit although I started of filling in the Plusnet gaps I now
don't bother and use NewsRover with all three Servers set up (Plusnet
/ Octanews / Astraweb). NewsRover then flits between the three to find
all the parts and ensure successful downloads.

km

John wrote:
can get a free 3 month trial of the Plus.Net news service using their
'Essential' account (see http://www.plus.net/btbroadband/ ) It's the
account I last 'downgraded' to (instead of a dial-up only) account on
switching ISP from Plus.Net on one phone line. I would usually give
it a mention if someone was wanting to know about their service for
getting binary groups (in the past they recommended people use any
third-party services for binaries, nowadays some of those can get
slowed down by the Plus.Net traffic calming kit, the Ellacoyas).

Anyway, I would probably not recommend Plus.Net to anyone at present,
as they seem unable to put clear product details on their own site,
so might be accused of misleading future customers / misrepresenting
their products. Peter M.

On Fri, 10 Feb 2006 15:49:21 +0000, John <me@privacy.net> wrote:

When I decided to move from my last ISP I contacted NDO and asked
about the news service. I was informed they do not provide this
service at all and directed towards some of the premium / public news
servers available.

In the end I went to Newnet which does have a news server but one so
utterly useless it may as well not have. I tried to sign up NIN but
found myself going around in circles trying to pay the €10.00 so I
gave up and signed up to Teranews which I am using now.

I am trialing the Newnet server alongside the Teranews one and it is
getting only about 1 in 5 messages - yes that's right.... it's losing
something in the region of 80% of the newsfeed so another ISP to
ignore if you want an included news service.

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km <ff@ff.co.uk> wrote:

Thanks - that's what I'm after, I don't need binaries. It seems as if
the Giganews service is exceptionally bad.

John