Re: Newsgroups and their messages

From: Vanguard (see_signature)
Date: 01/09/05 

Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2005 14:32:03 -0600

"Jimmy" <Jimmycliff-f@xemaps.com> wrote in message
news:AtidnWAj3KZ42nzcRVn-tg@comcast.com...
>I hope if someone can not answer this I can be directed to a proper
>forum. I am a subscriber to Comcast which has just changed the server(I
>hope I have this terminology right) to newsgroups.Comcast.net and now I
>guess this is supposed to be some sort of improvement. However I am
>having difficulties that can not be addressed by their support
>people(no news here). In addition to being presented with the logon
>dialog box numerous times I now see that my post is not even viewable
>whatsoever. I can find it with Google and continue a thread from their
>but never see it on the appropriate NG from outlook express. This
>problem has just started with this change and I am hoping someone can
>help out with this issue.
>
> TIA
> J.
>

Were you an ATTBI customer that got acquired by Comcast? Were you still
using the old ATTBI newsgroups server (netnews.comcast.net)? If so, and
because Comcast never wanted to get stuck managing NNTP servers, they
dropped that server. They prefer to contract out their NNTP service to
Giganews, so you have to open a Giganews account as a Comcast customer
to get the free *basic* Giganews service. Bandwidth was unlimited on
the old ATTBI/Comcast NNTP server but the basic Giganews account is
1GB/month and headers count in the download quota. Comcast promised an
increase to 2GB/month with header downloads not counting against the
quota but that really was a change by Giganews in their basic service
and doesn't take effect until the end of your quota cycle (check the
Giganews Control Panel by logging in at http://www.giganews.com/ to see
when your quota cycle next refreshes).

Their help page at http://online.comcast.net/giganews/ says to use
newsgroups.comcast.com (216.196.97.136) for the NNTP server (and says
the same thing in the link it has to a FAQ), yet that is the same IP
address as the old netnews.comcast.net server that they just killed.
Maybe they are trying to forward old users to the Giganews server. I
knew Comcast was going to kill the ATTIB newsgroups server they got
stuck with plus even their representative acknowledged that the old NNTP
server was very low priority for maintainence (I'd report problems that
were very slow to get addressed). So I signed up for a
Comcast-contracted Giganews account and had access to both NNTP servers
until the start of this month when Comcast killed off the old ATTBI
server. When I signed up for the Giganews account to get a cc######
username, I was told to use the following IP name for their NNTP server:

    news.giganews.com

The Comcast article mentioned above doesn't really tell you anything
about how to open an account at Giganews. All it talks about is how to
configure to use the Giganews account, not how to signup. However, at
http://faq.comcast.net/faq/answer.jsp?name=17505&cat=Newsgroups&subcategory=1,
apparently you don't have to signup, anymore. You just use your
username@comcast.net to login to Giganews (but it must be your primary
or owner account's username you use to login, not a member account's
username).

I had actually used up my 1GB/month quota in the Giganews account that I
had signed up for while testing it by downloading headers, so that
account is dead until the quota cycle date. I just created a new NNTP
account in OE which goes to newsgroups.comcast.net and uses the primary
Comcast account (owner account) to login in, I subscribed to some
newsgroups, and I could participate. So either going in via
newsgroups.comcast.net got me the increased 2GB/month quota (over the
1.07GB that I used up in testing the changeover which locked me out when
connecting to news.giganews.com with my cc###### username) but the
Giganews Control Panel doesn't reflect my use, or that gave me a
different account then the Giganews account that I had to signup for
before. I'm addicted to newsgroups so I don't want to consume another
1GB of bandwidth just to see if one or both accounts then go dead.

As a test, I downloaded headers in the newsgroups.comcast.net account in
OE and then checked the Giganews Control Panel to check my transfer
stats on my old cc###### account. No change in transfer stats, but then
the new NNTP service isn't supposed to count headers against the monthly
quota so that didn't prove anything (if it had changed then I would know
newsgroups.comcast.net using username@comcast.net for login was the same
account as using news.giganews.com using cc###### to login). So then I
synchronize one of the newsgroups (set to "All Messages") to force
downloading their bodies. I went off to lunch since this was going to
take awhile. When I got back, I again checked transfer stats by logging
into the Giganews Control Panel but the stats had not changed. So
connecting to newsgroups.comcast.net using primaryaccount@comcast.net to
login was not affecting my Comcast-contracted Giganews account logged in
using news.giganews.com and my cc###### username. So Comcast & Giganews
still have some stuff to iron out.

Comcast is still in a transition state regarding newsgroups, losing the
old ATTBI server, and redirecting through Comcast to pre-contracted
accounts at Giganews without a signup step. It looks like the "option"
(and joy) of signing up for a Giganews account is no longer required or
even possible. It could be a month, or more, before they iron out their
new setup for NNTP. 

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