Re: Newsgroups and their messages

From: Jimmy (JimmyCliff_at_xemaps.com)
Date: 01/09/05 

Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2005 17:24:58 -0500

Vanguard wrote:
> "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.

Ok, thanks Vanguard. This was very informative and helpful. I am an old
ATTBI user and before that it was Mediaone. I can see that this new Comcast
configuration is probably going to take some tweaks on their part as I have
to listen to a recorded report about slowness when I wait for them to get to
their first level of support.

J.

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