UPC & Usenet

moonboy52

Hi guys,

Is anyone here with UPC and use Newshosting as their usenet provider?

Newshosting has always been fine with my speed maxed out.

In the last few days i am getting a 1/4 of the speed i usually get.

I signed up for a giganews trial account and when i used them the speeds were again maxed out.

So is it possible that UPC could be throttling my connection to Newshosting (i use SSL)?

Is anyone else having any problems with them?

Cheers

CrazyRabbit

All that I can tell is that UPC don't employ packet shaping or anything else that will effect specific types of data. Myself and many others have confirmed this in the past with them.

Supercell

Exact same thing happened to me.
Havent tried any downloads outside of usenet though, assumed it was just the usual UPC crap service.
I'm using usual port 119 not sl.
Hmm, time to do some speed tests.

Supercell

OK i just signed up for a three day trial for thre dollars at UNS and getting the same speeds, hmm is this a blanket Usenet throttling.
Time to get a linux iso from heanet to see.

Supercell

OK, it is clear, UPC ARE throttling Usenet usage.

Both Newshosting and Usenetserver, two of the biggest premium Usenet providers are crawling along at less than 20% speed of normal.

However a linux iso download direct from Heanet is business as usual :-



Not happy, i do not see anywhere in the T&C that Usenet is throttled.

timefora_J

I'm with astraweb and haven't noticed any problems.

DingDong

I'm with Astraweb too no problems here's.

FloatingVoter

Astraweb as well. UPC 20Mbs package....I just downloaded a movie at 2.3 MB/s so thats the connection truly maxed out.
I think it may be giganews that have the problem.

Stokolan

I dont think ther are. I've noticed that in the evenings my speed drops by about 50% max recently.

Just ran a test from Astrawed, hitnews and heatnet and all 3 came in at the same speeds.

Supercell

So..they havent throttled astraweb yet..........

timefora_J

Nope and I hope they never will.

Im with Ngroups and yes something is up, hitting around 500kbs max. Even with SSL and trying alternative ports.

Woud be very disapointed if UPC are throttling Usenet.

Kilters

Uh oh,

I use powerusenet on 443 SSL on 30 meg UPC. I get 30 simultaneous connections and but I get max 1.5MB/s since this evening. Similar thing happens with torrents.

Ran a speedtest and I get what I normally get.



Smells of traffic shaping to me. bollox.

Yep there defiantly throttling, just tested with a dutch VPN and am back hitting 3500kbs+

Tut tut UPC. Bitorrent rapes your bandwidth but yet you choose to throttle usenet, a simple server/client connection.

Stokolan

Again I dont think they are specificly throttling usenet. I've done speedtest with speedtest.net, magnet.ie amd they cam in at the same speed. I downloaded files from the sites i stated earliuer and tried from rapidshare today and again they all came in at the same speed.

zilog_jones

Maybe it's just the routes they have to these particular servers are bad? That would also explain why it worked better through a VPN.

moonboy52

Newshosting is still acting up = 1.5MB/s max, and their customer support told me that my reverse traceroute had 4 hops of about 100ms and that my ISP needed to change their route to Deutsch Telecom.

GigaNews = Max

Rapidshare with Internet Download manager = Close to Max


When my month is up with newshosting im going to swap to Giga i think as they have a deal on atm $19.99 with SSL.

$5 more expensive than newshosting, but worth it i think?

Supercell

I think they just havent gotten round to trottling all the usenet domains yet,. I certainly will change when my Newshosting contract is up to one of the unblocked ones but I certainlywont buy a big block like six months in advance as I am sure UPC will get round to blocking them all one by one eventually.
Once my year is up with UPC I'm going back to dsl as this is just crap.

Strange when i switched to the US servers i got an increased to around 2100kbs, still about 1000kbs off.

The traceroute test on GN http://www.giganews.com/performance.html#traceroute

For the EU server saying max number of unresponsive hops reached (firewall or filter)

moonboy52

Just read a post there. The guy said to flush the DNS cache using

ipconfig /flushdns

Got 2.60MB/s at the start

At the end though it kept saying too many connections (30) and failing and the speed drastically reduced to 1MB/s

and the file (462 days old) could not be reapired.

With Giganews it is flying down at 3.50MB/s and no need to be repaired.

Supercell

I tried one of the other newshosts and am back to getting maxed out downloads.
Presumably the biggest usenet providers are getting throttled first, this is going to be a game of staying one step ahead until they block them all eventually I think.

moonboy52

Supercell wrote: »

I tried one of the other newshosts and am back to getting maxed out downloads.
Presumably the biggest usenet providers are getting throttled first, this is going to be a game of staying one step ahead until they block them all eventually I think.

I hope not.

Im on Ngroups, are nowhere near the biggest. Although alot of the smaller newsproviders use the Highwinds network.

Nroups use Highwinds, can be seen in the traceroute.

Do a tracert to both of them and see if either use Highwinds, maybe thats how UPC is targeting it.

moonboy52

Tracing route to news.iad.newshosting.com [209.197.12.12]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms ****** [***.***.*.*]
2 6 ms 8 ms 5 ms 10.92.240.1
3 11 ms 31 ms 10 ms 089-101-174078.ntlworld.ie [89.101.174.78]
4 43 ms 33 ms 29 ms 84-116-130-237.aorta.net [84.116.130.237]
5 28 ms 30 ms 52 ms 84-116-130-182.aorta.net [84.116.130.182]
6 84 ms 78 ms 94 ms 7-1.r1.am.hwng.net [209.197.1.241]
7 123 ms 113 ms 113 ms 1-1.r1.dc.hwng.net [69.16.191.62]
8 141 ms 118 ms 121 ms ve914.ar4.dc.hwng.net [209.197.1.38]
9 133 ms 113 ms 129 ms news.iad.newshosting.com [209.197.12.12]

I take it hwng.net is HighWinds?

As soon as the route hits hwng, the latency goes way up




Compared to Giganews:

Tracing route to news-europe.giganews.com [216.196.109.144]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms ***** [***.***.*.*]
2 8 ms 26 ms 7 ms 10.92.240.1
3 13 ms 11 ms 20 ms 089-101-174078.ntlworld.ie [89.101.174.78]
4 29 ms 47 ms 34 ms 84-116-130-237.aorta.net [84.116.130.237]
5 30 ms 29 ms 30 ms 84-116-130-218.aorta.net [84.116.130.218]
6 49 ms 29 ms 48 ms ams-ix.ams.giganews.com [195.69.144.193]
7 58 ms 30 ms 49 ms news-europe.giganews.com [216.196.109.144]

Looks like it, heres mine:

Tracing route to secure.newsfarm.ams2.highwinds-media.com [69.16.176.250]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    14 ms    15 ms    21 ms  109.xxx.xxx.xx
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3    11 ms    50 ms    15 ms  089-101-1758.ntlworld.ie [89.101.174.158]
  4    27 ms    20 ms    48 ms  84-116-130-198.aorta.net [84.116.130.198]
  5    34 ms    21 ms    23 ms  84-116-130-241.aorta.net [84.116.130.241]
  6    25 ms    21 ms    21 ms  uk-lon02a-ri2-pos-0-0.aorta.net [213.46.174.78]

  7    29 ms    36 ms    32 ms  te2-2-1.ar6.lon3.gblx.net [64.212.107.13]
  8    40 ms    36 ms   208 ms  te2-1-10G.ar4.LON3.gblx.net [67.16.132.209]
  9    78 ms    74 ms    89 ms  64.209.109.54
 10    83 ms    81 ms     *     3-3.r1.lo.hwng.net [209.197.1.197]
 11    89 ms    77 ms    81 ms  7-1.r3.am.hwng.net [69.16.190.57]
 12    82 ms    94 ms    81 ms  ve31.ar2.am2.hwng.net [69.16.191.118]
 13    83 ms    94 ms    75 ms  unknown.hwng.net [69.16.176.250]

Maybe there not throttling, maybe UPCs route to Highwinds is goosed, or maybe highwinds are having problems.

Pretty sure if UPC were throttling they would go for the big boys Giganews 1st.

Supercell

Interesting, looks like usenetserver uses the same hosting :-

Tracing route to news.usenetserver.com [74.209.129.10]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 206 ms 165 ms 143 ms 109.x.x.x
2 78 ms 29 ms 63 ms 188.141.126.1
3 138 ms 139 ms 141 ms 089-101-175062.ntlworld.ie [89.101.175.62]
4 121 ms 109 ms 60 ms 84-116-130-241.aorta.net [84.116.130.241]
5 89 ms 108 ms 136 ms 84-116-130-150.aorta.net [84.116.130.150]
6 230 ms 174 ms 153 ms te2-2-1.ar6.lon3.gblx.net [64.212.107.13]
7 187 ms 187 ms 182 ms te2-1-10G.ar4.LON3.gblx.net [67.16.132.209]
8 163 ms 194 ms 106 ms 64.209.109.54
9 186 ms 149 ms 179 ms 3-3.r1.lo.hwng.net [209.197.1.197]
10 182 ms 219 ms 248 ms 7-1.r3.am.hwng.net [69.16.190.57]
11 182 ms 199 ms 178 ms ve31.ar2.am2.hwng.net [69.16.191.118]
12 94 ms 197 ms 232 ms ve5.ar1.am2.hwng.net [69.16.177.130]
13 193 ms 231 ms 268 ms news.usenetserver.com [74.209.129.10]

Trace complete.

Maybe there is something to the highwinds premise...or highwinds is what is being throttled.

Yep you will find most Newsproviders are just Rsellers of Highwinds or Giganews.

bt of info on Highwinds:

Highwinds has been the Pacman of the Usenet industry, gobbling up many of the smaller independent newsgroup server firms. They kept many of the individual server farms and use them for the resellers, typically with less peering and retention than they offer for their flagship brands. They have servers in both the US and Europe. In the past Highwinds had some trouble merging their backend systems and users had some horrendous downtime, but that seems to be past. They've put all the best features into their Newshosting.com brand. Better yet, when you get a newsgroup account with one of these two brands, you get one company standing behind the billing, throughput, and backend solutions so there's no finger-pointing if anything goes wrong.

Now all we have too see if its been done on purpose or something else.

moonboy52

For now i think i will go with the notion that UPC's connection to Highwinds is the issue as cisk says.

Supercell, your latency is not that great.

iMADEtheBBC

I'm getting silly slow connections to usetnetserver.com
I used to get speeds in excess of 15-20 MB/sec but now get anything from 1 to 4 MB/sec

I'm not sure what the issue is. I'm hoping someone can suggest some troubleshooting here because it's a pain in the arse right now.

Is the problem with UPC or my usenet provider ?

I'm on UPC 30meg package. This is from a Win7 box on ethernet, no other downloading happening on my LAN.

Right now I'm getting average 4 Mbps using NewsBin and my provider usenetserver.com

I don't trust speedtest.net results but here's what I found:




Downloading an .iso from heanet.ie gave me average download of 3MB/sec ftp://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/TheOpenCD/3.1/TheOpenCD-3.1.iso

I tried traceroute to usenetserver and got this result

traceroute to news.usenetserver.com (74.209.131.10), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 10.92.x.x (10.92.x.x) 11.494 ms 7.541 ms 11.058 ms
2 089-101-174062.ntlworld.ie (89.101.174.62) 17.065 ms 10.726 ms 9.421 ms
3 84-116-130-237.aorta.net (84.116.130.237) 22.400 ms 26.280 ms 26.081 ms
4 84-116-130-178.aorta.net (84.116.130.178) 25.793 ms 84-116-130-182.aorta.net (84.116.130.182) 25.855 ms 84-116-130-218.aorta.net (84.116.130.218) 28.350 ms
5 7-1.r1.am.hwng.net (209.197.1.241) 75.285 ms 80.906 ms 78.747 ms
6 1-1.r1.dc.hwng.net (69.16.191.62) 120.196 ms 113.807 ms 109.512 ms
7 ve1004.ar1.dc1.hwng.net (69.16.190.122) 108.939 ms ve914.ar4.dc.hwng.net (209.197.1.38) 107.615 ms ve913.ar3.dc.hwng.net (209.197.1.34) 111.018 ms
8 * 69.16.186.118 (69.16.186.118) 130.051 ms 111.667 ms
9 * * *
10 * * *
11 * * *
12 * * *
13 * * *

I tried traceroute to giganews and got this result

traceroute to news-europe.giganews.com (216.196.109.144), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 10.92.x.x (10.92.x.x) 21.803 ms 19.030 ms 12.671 ms
2 089-101-175062.ntlworld.ie (89.101.175.62) 44.926 ms 11.832 ms 10.647 ms
3 84.116.238.33 (84.116.238.33) 24.118 ms 26.304 ms 27.794 ms
4 84-116-130-237.aorta.net (84.116.130.237) 27.906 ms 28.047 ms 23.493 ms
5 84-116-130-178.aorta.net (84.116.130.178) 24.117 ms 37.375 ms 84-116-130-218.aorta.net (84.116.130.218) 27.493 ms
6 ams-ix.ams.giganews.com (195.69.144.193) 25.917 ms 25.443 ms 28.473 ms
7 * * *

moonboy52

There is something going on with the route thru the HighWinds Network as sisk suggested.

My traceroute to NewsHosting is about 110ms as well whereas GigaNews is about 30ms (similar to your traceroute).

Im switching to the $19.99 GigaNews offer next month

iMADEtheBBC

Thanks, that makes sense. I'm going to take a look at giganews.