Re: [Pan-users] Pan 0.133 refuses to work any longer

[Duncan]

Mike Brown posted on Fri, 24 Aug 2012 22:49:33 -0500 as excerpted:

> Looks like us.news.astraweb.com is this one having issues, not me. 
> Major issues.
> 
> I've submitted a ticket with them and I am now using eu.news.... as the
> news server.
> 
> Anyone else use these guys as a news server?

To directly answer that question, not me.  (I'm not using any paid 
providers ATM, only gmane's list2news service, for following my various 
mailing lists including this one.  See http://gmane.org for more on that.)

But, I've done a bit of research as I keep thinking I'll start with a 
paid service again at some point and I thought I'd pass this on in case 
you weren't aware of it...

If you use astranews' block accounts, you may wish to at least keep 
blocknews.net in your bookmarks as well.  There's some differences:

Blocknews:

* Historically cheaper at the 1/2 TB+ level

* Blocks up to 3 TB (3072 GB)

* Measures in powers of 2 (1024 not 1000)

* Charges for headers but discounts traffic by 10% to account for them.

Astraweb/news:

* Blocks only up to 1 TB (1000 GB)

* Measures in powers of 10 (1000 not 1024)

* Doesn't charge for headers so no discount to general usage applied to 
account for them.

Both:

* Similar claimed retention (1400+ days binary, tho it's worth noting 
blocknews says 2 years plus for text so they might be lower there, but 
text groups take so little comparative space I'd guess it's similar)

* Both have a US (blocknews: iad/Virginia/WashingtonDC, astra: san jose, 
CA) and a European server (Amsterdam for both)

* 50 connections (on block accounts)

* SSL supported

HOWEVER:

While blocknews has HISTORICALLY been cheaper, Astra's current $50 1000 
GB plan seriously undercuts blocknews ATM (that's roughly their 500 gig 
plan price, 1024=$91, 3072=$240).  So Astra's WAAAYYY ahead, price-wise, 
ATM.

But as I said, blocknews has historically been cheaper, in part due to 
their larger blocks. (Astra's biggest block was the $25 180 gig for a 
long time, with blocknews' 200 gig for under $22 being more for cheaper 
unless you went hog-wild on headers, and they had 500, 1024 and 3072 with 
even better per-gig prices beyond that, but astra's blown that away with 
the $50 1000 GB plan, which blocknews hasn't reacted to yet.)  And I 
expect blocknews to slightly undercut astra again, given time.  But they 
aren't there ATM.

So as I suggested above, it's probably worth keeping blocknews bookmarked 
if you're doing blocks at astra, but astra's got the better deal ATM.

Of course, since the blocks don't expire, you could also just get a block 
from the other one to use as a backup provider, just in case, or just to 
actually see if they're reasonably comparable (see the next paragraph).

Meanwhile, I've seen pretty good things about astra in the past, but not 
so much either way about blocknews.  If anyone's using blocknews, I'd 
love to read your opinion of it, especially if you've used astra as well, 
and can compare/contrast.  Honestly, that has been the one doubt in the 
back of my head for blocknews, since I /haven't/ read anything about it 
other than the same straight price-per-gig/servers/connections/retention 
review that I did above, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has bad 
news provider horror stories...

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman