I'm back!

[Muddymike]

Has anyone else been cut off from News groups for the past 3 weeks?

After many contacts to my providers they came back with this last week; "Many apologies for all of the previous discussion on the issue, it appears that it was mostly incorrect. Since this was initially raised, we have become aware of a more widespread issue with authentication, which appears to be related to the Giganews servers themselves. We are currently in conversation with Giganews directly, and we are awaiting updates from them to advise of why the problem is happening."

Then this morning it suddenly started working again,

I don't suppose anyone missed me...

Mike

[Nightjar]

Following a hard drive crash about three weeks ago, I lost Usenet access for a couple of weeks. It turned out to be a conflict between Avast! and the Gignews servers. I had to turn off checking of SSL servers in Avast! to sort it.

[Bod]

[Andy Burns]

I did hear some grumbling from other Plusnet customers about lack of access to (the outsourced to giganews) usenet, due to a new range of IP addresses not being recognised, I escape that by having a fixed IP subnet.

[Tim+]

Um, why on earth didn't you switch to one of the many free servers?

Tim

[Muddymike]

I'm not that clever/knowledgeable about IT stuff, and couldn't get here to ask. For future ref where do I find a free server that doesn't go through my internet provider?

Mike

[John Williamson]

Eternal September, Albasani, aioe.net.......

I and many others find it worth paying 10 Euros a year to news.indivdual.net for spam filtering, although they only carry text groups, not binaries.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I use both aioe and news september as neither carries all the groups I read - and the amount of spam which gets through those is hardly worth paying to avoid. Like a couple of posts a week.

[Nick Odell]

As a matter of interest, who is your internet provider? I had a problem with the giganews usenet provision through Plusnet, used their help forum and within minutes received advice which completely fixed the problem for me.

Here's the embarrassing bit: the advice was to switch off my router and switch it on again. I didn't think of that for myself because everything else was working normally. (That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.)

Nick

[John Rumm]

Some listed here:

[Bod]

+1 for individual.net.

[Muddymike]

Also Plusnet. I had several phone conversations and replies to an enquiry ticket over three weeks, then middle of last week received the message above! Nothing more from them, I just tried opening news groups this morning and they are working again.

Mike

[Bob Minchin]

Muudy Who?

Lol

Welcome back Mike

[michael adams]

Its always worth subscribing to Eternal September which is free and can be a useful back-up. As usually when Eternal September is down, my normal provider Plusnet/Giganews is working.

When you subscribe they email you a password and username. There can be a bit of faffing around at first with setting it up, as the newreader may not accept the password (or something like that) but it will work eventually.

I had a problem in the past with Plusnet/Giganews which was solved by rebooting the router

michael adams

...

[S Viemeister]

+2

[Judith]

I also have had problems with Giganews and Agent 7 - Agent is sometimes unable to automatically download all bodies of messages for which it has downloaded the headers.

Giganews blame Agent: Fort have investigated - I have sent them in depth system monitor reports - and the problems remain (sometimes).

[Huge]

+another.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Thought Plusnet was perfect?

[Tim Streater]

+1 for new.individual.net

It's worth paying a few bob a year for something supported.

[Andy Burns]

They're fairly honest when they're not ...