Quote:
Originally Posted by Pastiche
I would use a non ISP news server with SSL connections. Astraweb is good and cheap.
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I discovered the issue was not on Shaw/Astraweb's end. It was my computer being unstable and creating broken files due to some memory issue.
Shaw's news server IS Astraweb. It even says so on the server trace. The only thing is that it limits your connection to around 500 KBytes/sec which isn't too bad. Also, retention is limited to 30 days but if you scan for stuff everyday, you pretty much don't need any more retention than that unless you suddenly have the urge to get something and it has passed that threshold. It also maxes out at 5 connections. The whole thing is free (well, bundled with my internet anyway) so I save about $10-13 a month versus a paid service.
Addtionally, if you get a paid service like full Astraweb/Giganews/Highwinds/Usenetserver, etc. you can simultaneously have that open along with the free Shaw service so you can end up with like 15-20 open connections at the same time to max out all your bandwidth. Back when I use paid services combined with Shaw I often found myself downloading at 3 megabytes per second (about 20 Mbit/s).