newsbin.com

In the older versions of NB you could set the order in which the servers would be used. So if a post was not found one server it would go to the next and so on. I see that you can still have more that two servers (set as master and slave) but no option to set the order without changing names making them alphabetical.

Server order has not been a supported option for some time now. It was removed when Newsbin v5 introduced improved downloading algorithms. There is no real need for most people to consider an order as Newsbin will automatically load balance across available servers. Worrying about server order is a level of micro-management that most users would not be interested in.

You can tune downloads in a number of ways by server specific settings:
- The Master/Slave setting for a server determines whether it should be used for headers
- The Typical Retention setting stops Newsbin from trying servers with low retention for older posts.
- The Fill setting allows servers to be specified as only used if no other server has the post.

If you are looking at a specific requirement it might be worth mentioining what it is to see if what you want can already be accomodated by existing Newsbin functionality.

I have a number of free servers, one provided by my service provider and a couple of servers I pay for. I would just like to choose the order in which they are used. Or does this sound dumb?

Jaffo wrote:I have a number of free servers, one provided by my service provider and a couple of servers I pay for. I would just like to choose the order in which they are used. Or does this sound dumb?

Why worry about the order as Newsbin normally uses them all effectively without help. Is there some other criteria that you have not mentioned why you would prefer some servers over others?

I have a Pay per download as offered by Astraweb and would like to only use this if a post is not available on other servers.

Jaffo wrote:I have a Pay pre download as offered by Astraweb and would like to only use this if a post is not available on other servers.

Set that server as a Fill server then. Fill servers only get used if no none-Fill servers have the post.

I have already done that, but that's not really answering my original question. Can the order be changed like in the pre 6 versions?

Jaffo wrote:I have already done that, but that's not really answering my original question. Can the order be changed like in the pre 6 versions?

I already answered that! No you cannot set the order in the current version.

If you only have 2 servers then setting the pay one to "fill" should be all you need to do.