I'm kinda new to Usenet, but I get the basic gist of it all. I am, however, experiencing a problem which I can't really find any info about on the net.

Basically, pretty much every Linux ISO I download from Usenet (I'm with Astraweb) has a HUGE number of incomplete files. I'm talking like more than a third of them, so well beyond what can be fixed with PAR2 files.

This is happening with articles less than a month old, and Astraweb has retention of more than 120 days across all groups. The searches inside Alt.Binz (that's the client I'm using btw), are all saying that the articles have 100% completion. That apparently doesn't mean much.

If this were only happening with the odd download, I'd just assume it was a s***ty upload, but it's happening with everything I've tried. I'm smashing my download quota on files I can't even use.

Any help would be appreciated.

Hmm... I was going to suggest you might be trying to get really old files, but you cleared that in your post.

With the PAR files you are downloading all the volume ones as well right?

I'm not sure what else it could be. Try a free trial with a different provider and see if the same broken ones work suddenly?

try using a different usenet client.

I'll try a trial with a different provider as a last resort, maybe Giganews or something.

But regarding a different client, what would you suggest? There's quite a few out there, and I chose Alt.Binz because it seemed to do everything in a pretty straight forward manner.

I wouldn't have thought that the client would cause problems like this, but of course, I'm new to this, so there's clearly something I'm missing.

Please halp

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm190/pointyfork/pleasehalp.jpg

^^ That was the intended reference.

I'm using Alt.Binz on the Internode news server without any issues whatsoever. Even with mega-old content.

You could try a different client if you want, but I doubt that's the problem (unless you managed to misconfigure it).

All I've really configured is the address for the news server, the number of connections, the port, and my username/password. Is there anything else I should be configuring?

lol its a 5th elephant reference

I just tried re-downloading one of the incomplete files of the archive, and it downloaded without a hitch. Usually when I've started to download a file that's incomplete, it turns red/pink while downloading, but this one didn't. It just downloaded the file, said it was all good, and that was the end of it. I re-checked the archive in Alt.Binz inbuilt PAR2 checker, and it still said that the file I JUST downloaded was incomplete.

What the f*** is going on?

try a different usenet provider (look for one that offers a free trial) and try a different nzb downloader, i suggest nzb-o-matic or grabit (never had a problem with either of these)

if you end up going with a different provider, i can't recommend easynews enough. they have a web interface, no news client required, and they auto un-rar or zip files before you download.. they have thumbnail preview of all movies, so you can check before you download.. you can select as many files as you want and add them on the fly to a zip, and then download it. all links to files are just normal http:// links..i load em up in my download manager and get nearly 2MB/s :)

yeh i am with internode and have had no problems yet... but if you want linux iso and you are with internode use their ftp... they have them all

I tried out usenet for 10mins, found it harder to use then torrents and didnt bother again. Is there a simple way to use it like I would with my awesome torrent sites?

It got covered in trogs usenet article. The way I have it set up it's even easier to download from usenet than it is a torrent.

Type nzb 'what I want' in the address bar, click the little sab icon on the report I want to download. Profit.

Hmmm, it seems the problem may not be anything on my end. I sent an email to the Astraweb tech support, and saw a link to the news page after I sent it. It had this:

2008-04-10 00:33:08
Apologies for the late notice. We have had an outage that is causing completion problems. We are currently recovering data and expect to have things back to normal within 48 hours. This outage is also having an impact on performance, and some users will notice that their speeds are slower than normal. Speeds should progressively return to normal once recovery is complete. Thank you for your patience.

That's from a week ago, but there's another similar post on there from a few weeks back, followed by another saying that it was fixed. This latest post doesn't have confirmation of it being fixed, so I guess it could be taking longer than the 48 hours they predicted.

I guess I'll just have to wait it out and see what happens. It's a pain, because my quota renews tomorrow, and I wanted to make the most of it. =(

Epic, Easynews sounds pretty rad if you can just download from the site without a client, but I checked the site and it said that they only have a few weeks of retention. A shame, really. =(

yeh i am with internode and have had no problems yet

Yeah, but your Internode account gives you access to both Astraweb and Giganews. That's like 200 days of retention right there, so I'd be surprised if you were having problems. Too bad the quotas on Internode aren't that good, otherwise I'd swap over to them in a heartbeat.

Alt.Binz + Astraweb + NewzBin = awesome linux ISOs

I'm with node, and I agree the DL is super fast through alt.binz, but I can't find anything. I'm only using the in built search engines, is there something I'm missing? If I do download something, everything works, it's just finding the stuff...