FreshDaemon
join:2007-09-25
St Catharines, ON
 ·TekSavvy Solutions..
|  [Newsgroups] Usenet speed consistently down by 20%
I have a 5Mbit DSL connection. For 10 minutes the connection will run at about 610KBps, as it ought to. But starting yesterday, after about 10 minutes of use it will drop to exactly 490KBps. I have been using it since April 20th without issue at full speed, consistently.
My news provider is Newsgroupdirect, I have an unlimited SSL connection and am allowed 20 threads. I have tried decreasing the number of threads but that makes no difference until I get below 5 or so, then it gets even slower.
I have verified with a bandwidth monitor that this is not false reporting. Screenshot attached.
If I restart the software, it immediately begins at 610KBPs, and then drops to 490 again, after exactly the same period of time. A speed test run after the problem has begun shows 5.17Mbps down and 0.65Mbps up, which is normal.
NewsbinPro and Grabit both do exactly the same thing. However, if I run Grabit and Newsbin at the same time, working on different downloads, the sum of their speeds will be the full 610KBps. Either one run individually will fall to 490KBps after a short time, though.
Also, I noticed that overnight and this morning, it seemed to run at full speed, but starting at about 1PM today, it's back to 490 again.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance! |
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EvilByDesire
Premium
join:2002-09-03
00000 | possible ISP throttle? |
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FreshDaemon
join:2007-09-25
St Catharines, ON | It's SSL encrypted, so it shouldn't be.
The throttled speed for Bittorrent on my ISP is 50KBps down, though, so 490 seems a little high. I also assume that if it were ISP throttling, then running two newsreaders shouldn't produce full speed. |
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EvilByDesire
Premium
join:2002-09-03
00000
 ·Atlantic Broadband
1 edit | said by FreshDaemon  :It's SSL encrypted, so it shouldn't be. The throttled speed for Bittorrent on my ISP is 50KBps down, though, so 490 seems a little high. I also assume that if it were ISP throttling, then running two newsreaders shouldn't produce full speed. your isp can drop your speed anytime they want, read your agreement, if they feel you are useing to much bandwidth they can slow you down.. SSL or no SSL the isp can throttle you..and plus it only happens at "peak" times so thats another vote for your isp doing something.. |
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FreshDaemon
join:2007-09-25
St Catharines, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
1 edit | But wouldn't they just slow down my entire connection - which would mean that I couldn't aggregate two newsreaders together to get around the throttle?
Also, I happen to have a good ISP that doesn't believe in throttling or capping. If you don't believe me I'm sure I could PM one of their reps to post in this thread. 
Edit: for clarity, I'm not being throttled. I still have full speed for Usenet. I just have to run two newsreaders to get it. |
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EvilByDesire
Premium
join:2002-09-03
00000 | mabey you need to use more or less connections, if it says 20 connections dont use all 20, only use half. |
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FreshDaemon
join:2007-09-25
St Catharines, ON | I already tried that. See original post. 1 thread alone is enough to max out 490KBps, I've tried any number of threads from 1 to the full 20. Right now I'm splitting 12 threads between two newsreaders to get full speed. |
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NewsgroupRev
Premium
join:2008-06-25
| If you are using port 563 for secure connection to NGD try changing to port 443. NGD supports the alternate port and this will help determine if it's a throttling issue.
- NGR
Newsgroup Reviews |
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FreshDaemon
join:2007-09-25
St Catharines, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
1 edit | [23:13:54] Level: ERROR MODULE=InterSocket, MSG=Error: Connection Failed, Host: news-ssl.newsgroupdirect.com Error Code: 10061:1034
Doesn't seem to like that port.
Additionally, the speed has started swinging around wildly for the last hour or two (after an initial few minutes at full speed) and running much slower than it should - even with both newsreaders. Image attached. Speedtest.net still shows a full 5.16Mbps down and 0.65Mbps up.
 |
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swintec
Premium
join:2003-12-19
Alfred, ME | Instead of port 563 with SSL, try either port 80, or port 81. 443 is no longer supported.
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FreshDaemon
join:2007-09-25
St Catharines, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Didn't help. Additionally, with just one newsreader I'm now only able to get 93KBps. With two it just swings about as I described before.
My ISP is pretty good but the company that owns the actual lines is Bell Canada, who are busy breaking the law and screwing customers right now. I'm increasingly suspicious that they're at the bottom of this. |
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FreshDaemon
join:2007-09-25
St Catharines, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Update: I think NewsgroupDirect is to blame for this.
I got a free trial with NNTPJunkie to test another provider, I couldn't connect to their SSL for some reason, but on the non-SSL connection I was able to maintain full speed for about 25 minutes, and downloaded 700MB. I only stopped at that point because the free trial is only 1GB, and I wanted to leave some to test the SSL service (assuming I can get through). No problems, though.
I went back to NewsgroupDirect, just to check it wasn't the time of day or anything and sure enough, after 250MB of downloading (which takes 5-10 minutes) it started doing the exact same thing again. However, although the average speed in that initial time is faster, it's a lot more peaky than NNTPJunkie's.
I'll send NGD a message and ask them what they're playing at. If they can't fix it or they don't answer, I'll just cancel my subscription with them and go with someone else. |
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ophelus
join:2004-01-11
Denver, CO | reply to FreshDaemon
This is all too common.. reminds me of the days I believe that giganews was throttling even though they were unlimited.. that was a few years ago.. but if there not throttling you.. then it's a ssl issue is my other educated guess.. |
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FreshDaemon
join:2007-09-25
St Catharines, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
1 edit | It's definitely NGD. I used a 15GB free trial with NewsDemon and everything went fine, and if two other providers don't have a problem I have a hard time believing it's anything on my end. One of their techs said he'd look into it on Saturday, but their servers were working (that's true, if they're designed to cap you). Haven't heard anything since then.
Time to send them an angry message and cancel my account.
Edit: Also, my speed is now capped at 60KBps and has been for 48 hours. At this rate it should be completely shut off by tomorrow! |
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swintec
Premium
join:2003-12-19
Alfred, ME
 ·RapidVPS
·surpasshosting
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
 ·VoicePulse
·RoadRunner Cable
| said by FreshDaemon :It's definitely NGD. I used a 15GB free trial with NewsDemon and everything went fine NGD and Newsdemon connect you to the same server. Keep in mind if it was actual server issues, it would have been prevalent on both, so it is certainly possible they did something more localized to them. Since it worked great on Newsdemon, did you try NGD right after to see if it worked fine?
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FreshDaemon
join:2007-09-25
St Catharines, ON | Yeah, I went straight back to NGD after finishing with Newsdemon and NGD was still doing exactly the same thing.
I'm wondering who to go with. Possibly Astraweb? |
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ophelus
join:2004-01-11
Denver, CO
| reply to FreshDaemon
Whoever.. I'm partial to giganews myself.. (with them not even hitting there quota's I would only bother with resellers) but considering a astraweb trial with all the buzz about it.. did I try them like 3-4 years ago?? maybe 5.. maybe.. I forget the name of the company back then before I went full newshosting..
giganews proprosed resellers are..
powerusenet is supposed to be one
and in theory usenet.net is too..
Remember most should have trials for yah.. |
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huginmunin
join:2009-05-24
| I'm having the exact same problems with NGD. First, download was capped at around 5mbits/s, then after a couple of days it was capped at 2mbit/s. I sent them an email, and they replied plz. give us traceroute to identify the problem. A couple of hours after the download was the full 10mbit/s again. So I downloaded a couple of GB, an then it was down to 3mbit/s, and after a while it was down to 2mbit/s again.
I have a 3 months unlimited account, and my 10mbit/s connection is not the problem. (it's a university uplink on the country backbone, and all other download tests give a full 10mbit). I've also tried a different location on campus with different IP, but with 100mbit/s connection. Same story. Thinking it might be that my MAC(NIC) was capped on the university network, I tried a 20mbit/s private provider uplink. Same story there too.
So, I figure its NGD capping download speeds. And it figures too, I've downloaded some 1,4TB (1080p mkv's) the last 16 days. I'm probably not a very profitable customer. |
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Pipo
| reply to FreshDaemon
Dear all,
I have quite the same problem with NGD and my 10Mbit Cable connection.
Since September 2008 I got this problem:
5 minutes after I launch my newsgroup reader, the download speed fall down from 1.3 MB/s to 300KB/s.
This problem does not appear on the beginning of a month, but in the middle of each month and disappear each first day of the next month.
Here is the test I made:
1- Using my account = the download speed fall down to 300KB/S after 5 minutes.
2- Using another account that a friend lent me = the download speed stay to 1.3MB/s
Some days after my test, my friend hoe lent me his account face of the same problem.
I open a ticket by the NGD Support and here is the answer:
"I have validated that your account is set up properly and our servers are operating normally.
Unfortunately, there is nothing else we can do about speed issues. "
You can be sure I will cancel my "Unlimited - 12 Months" plan ASAP |
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swintec
Premium
join:2003-12-19
Alfred, ME
·RapidVPS
·surpasshosting
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
·VoicePulse
·RoadRunner Cable
| said by Pipo :
This problem does not appear on the beginning of a month, but in the middle of each month and disappear each first day of the next month.
Do you have any idea what kind of traffic you do per week or month, in terms of GBs? It would seem at least to them, you are running up a certain total that they do not like, within two weeks time.
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