Connection starts fast and slows to 0 and never recovers

[laxity]

Hi All,

I have been using Giganews for years with Newsbin but lately I have been getting issues whereby downloads start of fast and then gradually get slower and slower until they stop. On restarting Newsbin (6.9 RC3) the downloads start fast again but the process repeats. I have been using the same configuration for years without issues. In the logs I see the following messages :

[04/12 00:10:20] ERROR NEWS SERVER ERROR: news-central.giganews.com NNTPServer: Zero bytes read from connection Attempting to Reconnect and try again
[04/12 00:10:21] ERROR NEWS SERVER ERROR: news-europe.giganews.com NNTPServer: Zero bytes read from connection Attempting to Reconnect and try again
[04/12 00:10:29] ERROR NEWS SERVER ERROR: news.giganews.com NNTPServer: Zero bytes read from connection Attempting to Reconnect and try again

Not 100% sure if these are related but might be.

Read some older posts on here regarding that error and saw suggestions to reduce connections which I have tried but not helping.
Was originally using 50 news-europe.giganews.com and 50 for news.giganews.com (I have max 100 connections on my account), then tried 25 per sever, then 10 per server - same issue
On suggestion from giganews I added 3rd server news-central.giganews.com. Have 15 connections set to all 3.

I also have a fill server (tweaknews) and I don't get the issue with gradual slow down if I only use that. It set Pri 2 normally. Problem with tweaknews though is I have never been able to get much more than 25Mbps from it ever.
Giganews I used to get full 1Gbps but now starts max 400Mbps then over about 3 mins gets slower and slower til eventually hits 0 and never recovers unless I restart newsbin.

Have tried VPN as well to ensure ISP isn't doing some kind of throttling but I see the same issue.

Just noticed the following additional messages once it hits 0 kbps :

[04/12 00:29:32] ERROR Downloader: Socket Exception NEWS SERVER ERROR: news.giganews.com NNTPServer: Timeout Waiting for Server to send Data: news.giganews.com
[04/12 00:29:37] ERROR NEWS SERVER ERROR: news.giganews.com NNTPServer: Zero bytes read from connection Attempting to Reconnect and try again
[04/12 00:30:37] ERROR news.giganews.comSSL Lib returned error: 0xffffffffffffffb4
[04/12 00:30:37] ERROR Downloader: Socket Exception NEWS SERVER ERROR: news.giganews.com Unable to start SSL to news server Error: SSL Negotiation Failed, Host: news.giganews.com Error: news.giganews.comSSL Lib returned error: 0xffffffffffffffb4 10060 A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond. news.giganews.com

No idea what else to try next. Really frustrating.

Cheers,
Richard.

[Stan]

I don't get what's up with Giganews. They run now on an old info structure and somehow many years ago got a decent reputation.
They are now noted as one of the worst and most times most expensive providers, with limited retention and missing articles.
There are much better and faster providers with better retention.

You also NEVER use the max connections of a provider. I think I use between 12 and 30 of 50 or 100 available connections.
Most times more slows things down and can cause issues, although you do say you did reduce the number of connections and still got errors. I am on a 1.5 Gig connection.

The fact also that tweaknews works shows it's not the program but giganews.

As for the speed of tweaknews, it's been a few years since I used them, but it was fast for me. Again, try less connections instead of more.

I even used Eweaka and got good speeds and others did not. If in the USA, try Newsdemon, NewsGroupDirect or if into retention try newshosting or usenetserver. Eweka also for retention, but some US users get slower speeds.

[Quade]

Yeah, I'd recommend limiting connections. I don't know if this will change anything but it's worth trying. I get 1 Gbps to usenetserver using 20 connections.