| Re: PING Leeky |
EasyNews, UseNet made Ea .. |
| TH1 (th1@x.invalid) |
2006/02/08 19:24 |
On 8 Feb 2006 11:09:03 -0600, leeky <leeky@reklama.ru> wrote:
>>
>>Forte is both a news client and a news server these days. See:
>>
>> http://www.forteinc.com/apn/index.php
>>
>He is using Easy as his server and Forte as his client.
No, his post which started this thread was posted using Outlook
Express, which is why I assumed when he said Forte that he was using
the Forte news service.
The text of his post was rather confusing though, mentioning both
Easynews and Forte, and when I now look more closely at its headers,
it was clearly posted from Easynews. And most people say "Agent", not
"Forte" when referring to the Agent news reader software.
>>And yes, the size of the news articles you post with *does* matter.
>>Around 50% of all news servers seem to have a maximum news article
>>size of approximately 500 kbytes. All news articles over that size
>>are dropped. This happens both on posting and when a news article
>>propagates through such news servers. All news servers have a maximum
>>size for news articles, but good ones like Easynews have that limit
>>set way high - several megabytes. But bad ones like ISP news services
>>all seem to use the 500 kbyte limit. RoadRunner and Cox certainly
>>seem to. I am told that some of the premium services do use 500
>>kbytes too.
>>
>That is not accurate. I have used just about every premium news server
>there is, and I have never had a 700 KB binary file dropped. Most
>major ISP's outsource news. Most outsourcing is handled by Giganews.
>Giga runs inns for their server. So do the majority of the other
>premiums. Those that don't, run Dnews. I have never played with Dnews
>as it is propietary, but with inns I'll be damned if I can find
>anything for setting max file sizes.
Again, we are talking about maximum news article sizes, not maximum
file sizes. There is a big difference between the two, although the
way you post you do not normally deal with that difference.
I run an old copy of DNews on one of my PCs, and it has a control in
its config files called "item_max" which is the limit on the size of
any one news article. The default value for item_max is 1000000 ie 1
Mbyte, which is probably why your posts get through to DNews servers -
people tend not to change such default values unless they have a
specific reason. I am pretty sure that all news server software will
have an upper limit on news article size - it makes it very difficult
for the software to buffer and handle news articles without such a
limit. But I expect that like DNews, they all have a default value
for it, and if there is no setting in their configuration to override
that default, the default will be used. Finding the setting in their
documentation may well be quite difficult, since the default is fine
for most users, so it is unlikely to be considered an important
control that they need to set and therefore has to be well documented.
That certainly seems to be how the DNews documentation handles
item_max.
[Later] I looked up the INN documentation on the net, and its control
for news article size is called MAX_ART_SIZE and has a default value
of 1000000L ie 1 Mbyte, just like DNews. It was similarly considered
to be an unimportant option. I was, however, surprised to find that
INN allows a value of 0 for MAX_ART_SIZE, which means that it will
accept any size of news article. I wonder if 0 is used on any real
news services. Sometimes options like this are not used much, and do
not actually work as they have not been tested properly and the bugs
fixed. Speaking as a programmer, unlimited size like this is often a
nightmare to implement properly, and is not something I would do
without a very good reason.
>>However, the size of the news articles does not determine the size of
>>the files you can post. PowerPost automatically splits the files you
>>load into it into the specified news article size. So if you split
>>your files into 10 Mibyte chunks using JAS or QuickPar, and you have
>>told PowerPost to post in 2560 line news articles, then it will post
>>32 news articles for each split file. This is a typical way of
>>posting for larger video files (up to about 1.5 Gibytes).
>>
>Multiparts are more likely to get dropped. I set PP default max lines
>to 15000. It is much easier to repost a 700 KB part than 3 MB part
>because 1 out of the 32 multiparts got dropped.
No, multiple news article posts are no more likely to be dropped than
any other post. A news article is a news article is a news article to
most news servers. They do not look for multiple news articles making
up a file, they just upload, download, transfer and store individual
news articles, without recognising any larger organisation of them.
Using PowerPost, it is easy to repost ("fill") one news article in a
multi-news article file. Right Mouse Button (RMB) on the file, "Task
Properties", tick the news article you want (PowerPost calls them
"Parts"), click "OK". RMB the file again, "Re-Queue Selected Files",
"OK".
>>You seem to be splitting your smaller video files into split files of
>>716800 bytes, and then posting them with PowerPost settings that post
>>one split file as one news article. PowerPost has the ability, if you
>>set the "Default Max Lines Per Part:" setting to a safer value such as
>>2560 or 3000, to automatically split your split files into smaller
>>news articles that are under the 500 kbyte limit. That would mean
>>that your posts would reach many more news servers.
>>
>See above and above.
>>The Forte APN news servers, like quite a few others, seem to have a
>>problem with binary posts in groups not in the alt.binaries tree. They
>>seem to be deliberately watching for them and dropping all news
>>articles that make up files larger than some limit, on the basis that,
>>according to them, binary posts should only be done in binary groups.
>>So your posts (except for text ones like the one I am replying to
>>here) are not turning up at all on Forte APN. And presumably also not
>>on all similar news severs, such as Supernews. Note that this seems
>>to have nothing to do with the news article size - it seems to be done
>>from information about the split file size that is posted in the body
>>of the news articles as part of UUencoding or yEnc encoding.
>
>That is actually true of most news servers. Posting binaries to
>non-binary groups is a no no. Giganews will not allow this, and as
>most major ISP's outsource through Giganews, their customers will not
>see binaries in this group. Premium news server such as Easy and
>Newscene care more about customer retention so they allow it.
I would question your "most major ISPs outsource through Giganews".
Quite a lot I have heard of seem to use Supernews, as they seem to be
cheaper. Giganews does have a large share of that market, but over
50%? Probably not.
Not supporting binaries in "non-binary" groups seems to be all about
making life easier for the news services when managing which groups
are put on which servers and disk clusters. Some news services seem
to run software which does this management automatically, or at least
semi-automatically and easily. For them, supporting binaries is just
checking the logs for excessive volumes on text servers and ticking
the "this group is a binary" box if necessary. For those running less
accommodating software, where much more effort is required when a
groups suddenly gets large amounts of binary traffic, it is much
easier to just ban that traffic.
>Now this may seem harsh to you, but I do not care about people using
>their ISP's news server or any other crappy news server. If people are
>into collecting videos on usenet, they need to spring for a good
>server. I alwasy suggest Easynews or Newscene. I post, then check with
>at least 2 good servers to make sure my posts made it. You will most
>likely never see me repost anything. I keep it real simple for the
>newbies, and the only group you will ever see me cater to is the
>dial-up crowd. And again, I have no sympathy for people using road
>runner or shaw.ca or even cox and speakeasy (those seem to be the most
>prevalent).
That choice is entirely up to you. In my posting, I also do not
accommodate those solely using a crappy server. But I do like them to
be able to make use of whatever does actually get through on their
crappy server, so that they can get the bulk of their downloads from
there and use their premium service or alternate service only for the
bits that do not make it to the crappy service. This makes it cheaper
for them - they do not have to download too much from their good
account and can get a cheaper one. Good news readers (now including
Agent 3) make this easy by doing it automatically.
But I do think that posting news articles that are above the 500 kbyte
limit is probably going a bit far. It certainly makes your life easy
- you don't get repost requests because almost none of your posts ever
get through to anywhere that would need reposts. Only the last file
of a post is likely to be small enough to get through to lesser
servers.
You also do not post PAR2s for your files, which I find is sufficient
for those using reasonably well run ISP news severs to be able to cope
without needing any reposts. No amount of PAR2s is going to be able
to make anyone solely relying on RoadRunner able to download things,
but there are a lot of better ISPs out there (which used to include
Cox) where 10% of PAR2s does the job just fine.
Have you considered using PAR2s, if not to help out with missing or
damaged news articles on crappy servers, but for the peace of mind of
everyone? You do post a .crc file, for which I am very grateful, but
the checksums used in PAR2 are significantly more powerful and provide
better protection. If you do not want to post extra PAR2 block files
to help recover problems, you can just get QuickPar to produce a
single extra block and only post the small index .PAR2 file. I
really, really hate it when I download a file that has been damaged
due to no or inadequate checksum protection at some point in its life,
so I prefer to use the best protection available for posts, which at
the moment is PAR2.
The upcoming PAR3 system will be much faster than CRC or PAR2 and will
provide as good protection as PAR2, so when it arrives (this year?) I
hope you might check it out and consider using it.
As I said, it is entirely up to you how you choose to post. I just
thought I would talk to you about it, in case the way you were posting
was simply inertia from earlier times when the tools (such as
PowerPost and PAR2s) were not as capable. If you are actually making
a conscious choice to post the way you do, then that is fine. You are
posting some very nice stuff, and I can download it from Easynews
perfectly well.
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