News server on Sonic

[Tak Nakamoto]

I'm puzzled by the nntp server that I use as a Sonic customer. My
understanding, after I looked at the Sonic blogs and user forums, is that
the company no longer supports newsgroups but that they have kept a news
server available. I'm not clear about what this means. And further searching
on Sonic's own website has not given me any better understanding. Sonic no
longer hosts its own support newsgroups.

If you're reading this message, Sonic's news server allows postings. I can
read what others have posted at least on some of the newsgroups, like
"ba.internet."

However another group I read and occasionally add to, "ba <dot> food"
appears to get purged regularly so that past posting disappear. Ba.internet
does not get purged at the same time. Somebody must be babysitting the news
server. I'm wondering if this purging is automatic, manual, or technical
failure. The purging of the "food" group appears to coincide with the group
being flooded by some folks who appear to have some weird conflicts to work
out, unrelated to discussions about local food. I suspect that the purging
of postings might be triggered manually by some disgusted person.

Can someone more familiar with Sonic explain what's going on?

Tak Nakamoto

[Rob Warnock]

Tak Nakamoto <***@sonic.net> wrote:
+---------------
| I'm puzzled by the nntp server that I use as a Sonic customer.
...
| I can read what others have posted at least on some of the
| newsgroups, like "ba.internet."
|
| However another group I read and occasionally add to,
| "ba <dot> food" appears to get purged regularly so that
| past posting disappear. Ba.internet does not get purged
| at the same time. Somebody must be babysitting the news
| server. I'm wondering if this purging is automatic, manual,
| or technical failure. The purging of the "food" group
| appears to coincide with the group being flooded by some
| folks who appear to have some weird conflicts to work out,
| unrelated to discussions about local food. I suspect that
| the purging of postings might be triggered manually by
| some disgusted person.
|
| Can someone more familiar with Sonic explain what's going on?
+---------------

I'm not familiar with Sonic's internal procedures w.r.t. netnews,
but in general it's quite common for news servers to be set up
to automatically expire [what you're calling "purge"] articles
on a per newsgroup basis, based on various criteria such as age,
total number of unexpired articles in the newsgroup, and/or
total size [bytes] of unexpired articles in the group. Different
newsgroups may have the criteria set to different values.

The Wikipedia article on Usenet notes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#Binary_retention_time
...
Binary retention time
Each newsgroup is generally allocated a certain amount of
storage space for post content. When this storage has been
filled, each time a new post arrives, old posts are deleted
to make room for the new content. If the network bandwidth
available to a server is high but the storage allocation is
small, it is possible for a huge flood of incoming content
to overflow the allocation and push out everything that was
in the group before it. If the flood is large enough, the
beginning of the flood will begin to be deleted even before
the last part of the flood has been posted.

Even though the above was written about binary groups, it also
applies to other groups with large traffic surges, which might
explain what you're seeing.

Again, what you're seeing is probably all automatic, *not* manual...


-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock <***@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403

[Tak Nakamoto]

"Rob Warnock" wrote


Even though the above was written about binary groups, it also
applies to other groups with large traffic surges, which might
explain what you're seeing.

Again, what you're seeing is probably all automatic, *not* manual...

----------

Thanks. This is consistent with all the facts. While it doesn't rule out
manual intervention, this explanation seems to be the most likely.

Tak

[Otto Pylot]

Post by Rob Warnock
Even though the above was written about binary groups, it also
applies to other groups with large traffic surges, which might
explain what you're seeing.
Again, what you're seeing is probably all automatic, *not* manual...
----------
Thanks. This is consistent with all the facts. While it doesn't rule out
manual intervention, this explanation seems to be the most likely.
Tak

From what I understand, news.sonic.net has a much shorter retention for
articles than their other newsserver, supernews.sonic.net. However, the
download speed of news.sonic is considerably faster than
supernews.sonic, which seems to be limited to around 60kbps but
supernews has a much longer retention time for articles.

[Tak Nakamoto]

"Otto Pylot" wrote

From what I understand, news.sonic.net has a much shorter retention for
articles than their other newsserver, supernews.sonic.net. However, the
download speed of news.sonic is considerably faster than
supernews.sonic, which seems to be limited to around 60kbps but
supernews has a much longer retention time for articles.

----------------

I didn't even know about "supernews.sonic." I didn't find a mention of it
when I searched the Sonic website. I'll have to look again.

Thanks!

Tak Nakamoto

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Post by Tak Nakamoto
I'm puzzled by the nntp server that I use as a Sonic customer. My
understanding, after I looked at the Sonic blogs and user forums, is that
the company no longer supports newsgroups but that they have kept a news
server available. I'm not clear about what this means. And further searching
on Sonic's own website has not given me any better understanding. Sonic no
longer hosts its own support newsgroups.
If you're reading this message, Sonic's news server allows postings. I can
read what others have posted at least on some of the newsgroups, like
"ba.internet."
However another group I read and occasionally add to, "ba <dot> food"
appears to get purged regularly so that past posting disappear. Ba.internet
does not get purged at the same time. Somebody must be babysitting the news
server. I'm wondering if this purging is automatic, manual, or technical
failure. The purging of the "food" group appears to coincide with the group
being flooded by some folks who appear to have some weird conflicts to work
out, unrelated to discussions about local food. I suspect that the purging
of postings might be triggered manually by some disgusted person.
Can someone more familiar with Sonic explain what's going on?
Tak Nakamoto

news.sonic.net seems to be out of service now. The indexes are severely
corrupted.

[t***@gmail.com]

Post by Kevin McMurtrie
news.sonic.net seems to be out of service now. The indexes are severely
corrupted.

Sonic's news server is still out of service. Also I tried to use supernews.sonic and could not log in. But this might be for the same reason that news.sonic is unusable.

Sigh, I'm stuck with google for now.

[Paul E Coad]

Post by t***@gmail.com

Post by Kevin McMurtrie
news.sonic.net seems to be out of service now. The indexes are severely
corrupted.

Sonic's news server is still out of service. Also I tried to use supernews.sonic and could not log in. But this might be for the same reason that news.sonic is unusable.
Sigh, I'm stuck with google for now.

You are never stuck with google for news. Several of us from sonic
have switched to eternal september. (www.eternal-september.org)

--paul

My is valid coad sonic net
address not use: at dot

[David Kaye]

Post by Paul E Coad
You are never stuck with google for news. Several of us from sonic
have switched to eternal september. (www.eternal-september.org)
--paul

That's what I use, too. I don't know the guy who runs it but I think it's
in Germany or somewhere, and he had a lot of dedication to keeping his news
server up and running 24/7. I don't know a thing about news server software
except that most people who have run them complain about what a hassle they
are to run.

And there are others like Giganews that provide news feeds (except binaries)
for a monthly fee.




---
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[John Slade]

Post by David Kaye

Post by Paul E Coad
You are never stuck with google for news. Several of us from sonic
have switched to eternal september. (www.eternal-september.org)
--paul

That's what I use, too. I don't know the guy who runs it but I think it's
in Germany or somewhere, and he had a lot of dedication to keeping his news
server up and running 24/7. I don't know a thing about news server software
except that most people who have run them complain about what a hassle they
are to run.
And there are others like Giganews that provide news feeds (except binaries)
for a monthly fee.

These days a number of USENET providers sell blocks of
data. You could get a 25GB block for $5. For a purely text user
that would last a very long time.

John

[Julian Macassey]

Post by t***@gmail.com
Sonic's news server is still out of service. Also I tried to
use supernews.sonic and could not log in. But this might be for
the same reason that news.sonic is unusable.
Sigh, I'm stuck with google for now.

No you are not. When I was a sonic punter I ysed eternal
september:

http://www.eternal-september.org/