Astraweb/Usenet Download Issues

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gerritcar

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Hi All

I have a usenet account with Astraweb. Since about Wednesday, I've had issues downloading anything from usenet.

I have an MWEB uncapped 384kbps account. I live in the Bellville, Cape Town area. I checked my http downloads and they are still fine, downloading at an average of 39-ish KB/s.

When connecting, it connects and authenticates successfully, but the download speed remains at 0KB/s.

Is anyone else experiencing this? Is there perhaps a line fault somewhere? Should I try a different port (currently using port 563)?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
 
My news server connects but dosnt do anything. sits on 0% the whole time until it closes the connection and retries. I'm on IS uncapped express...

I've tried connecting to IS, axxess, Saix and mweb. Mweb and saix never connect, but IS and axxess some times connect, but only for around 1 min.
 
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strange - also seem to have a problem with astraweb - not connectiong...

Please let me know if yours is working again...
 
Mmm...mine is still not working.

The worst is not knowing where the problem lies - is it my setup, MWEB, SEACOM/SAT3, Astraweb, etc?

I'll keep checking and I'll let you all know when it is working again or when I have more info.

Thanks! :)
 
Hi guys,

Okay, an update.

In my quest to find the root of the problem, I decided to sign up with Giganews to take advantage of their 14 day free trial. My plan was to try it to see if it works, and then cancel my account once I have an answer.

I did sign up, but...nothing. Exact same problem. Download peaks at about 7KB/s, then drops to 0KB/s.

So, at least I now know that the problem does not lie with the usenet provider.

I'm really running out of ideas now, and it's quite frustrating...ANY other ideas, please?

Thanks! :cry:
 
Just give me a summary of what you have tried. How is all the other downloads e.g. downloading from Microsoft.com - are these downloads ok?
 
Yup, HTTP downloads are fine - downloaded some random thing from download.com, and it runs at the full 40KB/s speed. It is JUST the usenet downloads that seem to not be working. I wonder if this is not an MWEB issue...maybe they're throttling the crap out of the ports, or perhaps they've closed all of the usenet ports altogether?

Sigh...
 
I have just tried an Axxess R 99 uncapped and Astraweb is shaped quite badly where everything else seems to be running normally (have not tried torrents). It could be the ISP - I dont think it is a line fault as your other downloads are fine. Have you tried a cheap capped account and see what that result is?

Astraweb fiies for me - around 430k on a 4096k line. what plan are you on with astraweb- have you not run into a cap with them as some of their options have caps?
 
Thanks a million for the tip Bosvark@ - I remembered I still have my line rental (including a 1GB account) with Cybersmart as they are very cheap.

I have a capped Astraweb account, but I still have 40 gigs left. So, I tweaked my router for Cybersmart...and...

Usenet is back in business! Downloads at 40KB/s!

So, this is very very interesting...the problem obviously lies with MWEB then...what can I do about that? Can I actually ask someone at MWEB why my Usenet downloads are not working? Won't they complain about the fact that I download from Usenet?

Any further help will be greatly appreciated!

Cheers :D
 
Phone them and ask them as a "new customer" to see what their policy is on news server downloads - is it shaped or not. and lets seew hat they say.
 
If you are in the Cape Town area, you have been moved over to MWEB's new IPC server... the traffic is extremely high and thus they have been shaping ALL traffic heavily (day and night). I have cancelled my Astraweb account and signed up with NewsDemon. The account is a little more expensive ($13/month), and has 50 SSL connections over port 80. This has helped a bit to get full speeds again, but since the change onto MWEB's server, my line is limited to 4Mb... previously my account was being authenticated by SAIX (Telkom) and I was getting full 10MB speeds (~960kb/s). I have logged a call with MWEB, and they hope to have more bandwidth available by the end of the month.

BTW, all this happened since Wednesday.... :-(
 
I'm having the same problem with Astraweb using Web Africa. But I've just connected using Afrihost and it downloads again. Very strange.
 
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