Newsgroup Servers (Giganews, Supernews, Newsguy, etc)

how to choose a 3rd party newsgroup service

Synopsis: This article describes how to choose a newsgroup server (also known as a newsgroup service, nntp server, or news server). Why do you want to do this? Usually it's necessary when you find your existing newsgroup server lacking -- not fast enough, doesn't retain enough newsgroups, censors the newsgroups, or places limits on how much you can download.

Here's a common scenario: you're downloading some huge file, such as a mpeg movie, cd image, a dvd, or some huge RAR file. You get about a fourth the way through it an wham! you receive a "quota exceeded" message. You've hit the bandwidth limit on your server. What are you going to do? How are you going to finish off that file?

The only option is for you to choose a 3rd party newsgroup server. There are several of these out there. A few that I've personally tried include supernews (http://www.supernews.com/) and newsguy (http://www.newsguy.com/). Another one that appears to be hugely popular is giganews (http://www.giganews.com), although I've not personally tried it myself yet.

Let's talk very briefly about the advantages and disadvantages of choosing a 3rd party news server:

  • Advantage: Higher Monthly Traffic Limit. This means you can pull down that huge file that you were looking for.
  • Advantage: Better Bandwidth. Sometimes your default server will "throttle" your connection; the paid servers usually don't do that. Keep in mind that your bandwidth is also limited by your Internet connection. If you only have a 56Kbps modem connection, then a high-bandwidth server isn't going to do you much good.
  • Advantage: Less censoring. Sometimes your default server will censor (or restrict access to) certain newsgroups
  • Advantage: Longer Retention. The paid servers keep around the articles longer.
  • Advantage: Simultaneous Connections. Advanced downloaders like Android and QuadNews can accelerate downloads by using simultaneous connections.
  • Disadvantage: Cost. The obvious disadvantage is, well, cost! The paid servers unfortunately cost money, usually a monthly fee.
Servers vs Downloaders. It's time to make an important distinction between the newsgroup downloader software, and the newsgroup server. The newsgroup downloader software (such as Android,  SBNews, QuadNews, Binary Vortex, etc) is used to access servers and download files to your computer. Software generally comes with a "free trial", and you only have to pay a small one-time registration fee. A paid newsgroup server is the computer on the Internet that you retrieve articles from. The paid servers are optional, and you only need to use one if your default server is insufficient. Paid servers generally have a recurring fee, such as a monthly or yearly fee.

So, let's talk about how to select the perfect paid provider. First of all, you want to contact some of the popular companies. Here are a list of links:

Each one of them will likely offer you several different "packages". You're going to want to evaluate the packages and pick the one that's best suited for you. Make sure to note the following for each package that you're evaluating:

  • Monthly Traffic Limit. A cd image can be about 600 MB, a dvd image can be 4 GB or more. An hour of video ranges from 300 MB to a couple of GB depending on the compression level. Most people are looking for about a 30 GB/month limit. Keep in mind that big limits are only useful for DSL/cable-modem connections. If you have a slow dialup, then a high limit is useless for you.
  • Simultaneous Connections. Multithreaded downloaders like Android and QuadNews are very popular. You might want to check and make sure that your server will support at least 4 simultaneous connections.
  • High-Bandwidth. Almost all of the paid news servers feature high bandwidth. Some of them will feature a "bandwidth test" of some sort where you can test a download to your PC to see how fast your connection is.
  • Web Interface. Some of the servers support a web interface for browsing newsgroups without using newsgroup downloader software. This can occasionally be useful, but it's not real important as you'll be using your newsgroup downloader software (Android,  SBNews, QuadNews, Binary Vortex, ...) most of the time.
  • Cost. Cost is of course important to most people. Make sure to get the most bang for your buck.

I get a lot of requests from people asking me to recommend a news server for them. Generally I avoid recommending a specific product over the competition, but I can say that I've had personal experience using supernews and newsguy, and have heard good things about giganews as well.

Submit your opinions of newsgroup servers -- send your opinions to ngd@newsgroupdownloaders.com. As time permits, I'll see if I can set up a feedback area, so that people can share their experiences and evaluation of various providers.

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