newsbin.com

Preface: I tried searching the forums for this question "cannot pause header downloads" but did not get any hits

My setup:
Quad core AMD CPU w/16GB RAM
Windows 7 64-bit, all the latest Microsoft updates as of 10-Sept-2014
Newsbin 6.53 64-bit

Here's my typical usage scenario:
Startup Newsbin.
Do not open up any newsgroups.
Verify there is nothing in the download queue.
Press the "pause/run" button (lower right hand corner of Newsbin window) so it shows "Paused"
Verify that nothing is actually downloading.
Let it catch up on importing any headers it may have already downloaded.
Once any previously downloaded headers have been imported (counter in 'Cache:' box says '0'), now open up only 1 newsgroup
Wait for selected newsgroup to fill the window
Press the "pause/run" button so it shows "Run"
Verify that headers are downloading
As headers are downloading (it takes a big newsgroup with lots of headers to catch up on for this test), press "pause/run" so it shows "Paused"
Notice that headers continue to download.
Wait a few minutes thinking Newsbin was trying to finish up a specific download, then check again, and headers are still downloading.

I verified that the same approximate level of network traffic is flowing to this computer regardless of the state of the "pause/run" button when just downloading headers for a very large newsgroup, based on the scenario described above. To verify traffic was still flowing, on the computer itself I used a Windows Sidebar tool called "Network Meter", and on my Linux firewall I use a tool called "Webmin", and no other computers were creating any unrelated network traffic.

I have tried highlighting the rows in the Download List window and using the "pause" button there, but there is no change; headers continue to download despite the fact the small icon on each highlighted row now shows a "pause" symbol.

Right now the only way I can "stop" a large header download is to "delete" the entries from the Download List.

Is the behavior that I describe above considered "normal and expected" for Newsbin? Is this a bug of some sort? Is it "operator error"?

I can confirm that the "speed limiter" function does appear to limit the download speed of header downloads, but that does me no good in this case.

That's alot of frikin effort, for me to tell you you can't pause header downloads.

Deletion is the only way to stop a header download in progress. Pause will prevent header downloads from starting but, once they're running, they run to completion.

The reason is that there aren't any good break points in header downloads. Thus, no way to pause in a way that won't cause a connection failure. File downloads have consistent break points at the chunk level (files are made of chunks).

Thank you very much for the prompt reply and clear explanation as to why not. The quick reply was very unexpected.

I tried to be helpful up front by clearly explaining what I was seeing and how I could create the problem, just in case.