giganews blog

We reached another Usenet milestone today! We are the first Usenet provider in the world to offer 1,500 days of binary Usenet retention. This translates to over 4 years of binary retention and over 8.5 years of text retention. Don’t worry - we aren’t stopping at 1,500 days and will continue to grow Usenet retention everyday.

Unlike other Usenet providers, we deliver the same speed and article completion across every day of Usenet retention across all 110,000 newsgroups. Our high quality newsgroup retention is a testament to the strength of our redundant infrastructure and our team's dedication to the Giganews service and its members.

We would also like to thank all of the Giganews members that have supported us over the years. We would not be able to grow our Usenet retention without you! Thank you for your support.

We continue to provide more than Usenet service. Over the past two years, we have worked hard to deliver an impressive set of additional software and services to complement our Usenet service, including:


We also recently launched the Giganews Control Panel App for iOS and Android. The Giganews Control Panel App allows members to manage their account usage, disconnect VyprVPN connections and stay informed on Giganews updates on their iPhone, iPad or Android device.

We have more exciting services and tools coming to Giganews this fall, so stay tuned. In the meantime, enjoy our world leading Usenet retention.

To stay up to date with Giganews, please subscribe to our blog and follow us on Giganews Facebook, Giganews Twitter, Giganews YouTube Channel, and Giganews Google+.

Labels: retention, usenet

We recently became the first Usenet provider in the world to provide 900 days of newsgroups retention and we haven't stopped growing our retention. Today, we currently provide 957 days retention. While some might try to match our retention, no Usenet provider matches our speed or reliability.

As the worldwide leader in Usenet retention over the past decade, we remain dedicated to supporting the NNTP protocol and providing the best service possible to our customers.

On May 2nd, we will become the first Usenet provider to store 1000 days of binary Usenet retention. To celebrate this milestone, we are pleased to announce the Giganews 1000 Days Prize Giveaway. Enter the Prize Giveaway to be eligible to win the following prizes:

Grand Prize:

• Drobo FS - 5TB

Other Prizes:

• iPad 2
• PS3
• Xbox 360
• Twenty five (25) Giganews T-shirts

All existing Giganews customers are automatically entered into the 1000 Days Prize Giveaway based upon their account level and length of Giganews membership. Diamond customers receive two entries for each month of Diamond membership. Non-Diamond customers receive one entry per month of membership. For example, if you have been a Diamond for 5 years, you will automatically receive 120 entries. No entry required!

Non-Diamond members can automatically double their number of entries by upgrading to Diamond before we hit 1000 days of retention. If non-Diamond customers upgrade to Diamond on or before March 31st, you can also lock-in the $29.99 Diamond price.

Earn additional entries by following the instructions on the 1000 Days Prize Giveaway page.

Enter to Win!

When we hit 1000 days of newsgroups retention, we will draw names for the prizes and announce the winners on our blog. So check back here on May 2nd to see if you've won!

Labels: 1000 days, binary retention, contest, usenet

Diamond membership is increasing from $29.99 to $34.99 after March 31st, but only for new Diamond accounts. That means if you come back, upgrade or create a new Diamond account on or before March 31st, you will lock-in the $29.99 price!

Please note that for current Diamond customers, your price will NOT increase. Whether you have been a customer for 10 years or one month, if you are a Diamond customer on or before March 31st, 2011 your Diamond price will remain $29.99.

The Giganews Diamond account is the most feature-rich Usenet account in the world. Not only does it come with unlimited downloads, unlimited speed, the highest completion rates and longest retention in the world, it also includes the Mimo Usenet Browser + Search and VyprVPN at no additional cost.

Due to overwhelming response to the $29.99 lock in price, we postponed the price increase for three additional months on January 1st, 2011, but we just can’t extend it any further. During the past three months, we were hard at work making the world’s best Usenet plan even better:

• On February 16th, the Mimo Usenet Browser got a powerful new core; Mimo is free for Diamond members
• On February 9th, we added the L2TP/IPsec VPN protocol at no additional charge to Diamond accounts
• On January 24th, we hit 900 days of retention and we’re continuing to grow our retention every day

We are very excited about these improvements and hope everyone takes advantage of the special $29.99 lock-in price before March 31st, 2011, by signing up or logging into the control panel to upgrade now.

Again, current Diamond customers' price will NOT increase. Your price will remain $29.99 if you are a Diamond customer on or before March 31st, 2011.

Labels: Mimo, usenet, vyprvpn

Due to overwhelming response, we're pleased to announce that we are extending the special $29.99 lock-in price for Diamond accounts until March 31st, 2011! After March 31st, the price of the Diamond account will increase to $34.99.

For existing Diamond customers, your price will NOT be raised. Whether you have been a customer for 10 years or one month, if you are a Diamond customer on or before March 31st, 2010 your Diamond price will remain $29.99.

Every Diamond account bundles the Mimo Usenet Browser + Search at no additional cost. By extending the Diamond lock-in pricing, we wanted to allow people time to experience some major improvements to Mimo over the next four months. The Golden Frog Dev team has planned the following updates to Mimo:

• Significant functional and stability improvements to Mimo's engine
• Major User Interface upgrades – a complete overhaul is planned for 2011
• Advanced download queue prioritization and management
• Much, much more

We are very excited about these improvements and hope everyone takes advantage of the special $29.99 lock-in price before March 31st, 2011, by signing up or logging into the control panel to upgrade now.

Again, current Diamond customers' price will NOT be raised if you are a Diamond customer on or before March 31st, 2010.

Labels: Mimo, usenet

Back in July, we partnered with Golden Frog to deliver a new Usenet experience. We invited our most loyal Diamond members to an early access tech preview of Mimo Usenet Browser and Golden Frog Usenet Search. It was a simple choice to invite enthusiastic Giganews members to help develop the best Usenet browser and search platform.

Now, after 4 months in an exclusive tech preview, Mimo and Golden Frog Usenet Search are in beta and available for all Diamond Giganews members. With this release, Mimo comes with:

• faster speeds
• integrated thumbnail viewing
• a search engine that dynamically indexes Giganews' growing retention
• auto unRAR and PAR handling
• text, binary, and image filters

Participants reported bugs and requested features to improve Mimo and Golden Frog Usenet Search. From initial development to the technology preview and into beta, Golden Frog has added or fixed nearly 450 different features in response to member feedback.

One of the most requested features has been bandwidth throttling. Today, the new Mimo version has the option to control how much of your Internet connection is used by the browser. Member input also helped improve Mimo’s multi-language support, which currently covers six languages.

Golden Frog created Mimo and its integrated Usenet search to accommodate Giganews’ full and increasing retention. This is the world’s only cross-platform Usenet browser with integrated search indexing all 800+ days of Giganews’ retention. As Giganews’ retention continues growing, Mimo and Golden Frog Usenet Search are designed to dynamically keep up.

Mimo and Golden Frog Usenet search are in continuous active development. You can request features or report bugs by e-mailing Giganews Support or posting in giganews.mimo. We work closely with the Golden Frog development team to incorporate all member feedback. Expect continued improvements to Mimo’s resiliency, performance and ease of use.

Mimo and Golden Frog Usenet Search are free with all Giganews Diamond memberships today. Join the ongoing development. Download Mimo or become a Diamond member now.

Labels: Mimo, usenet

A little over a year and a half ago, we announced that we were going to be the first Usenet provider with a year's retention. We got to that year, and then just kept going. We hit two years a little while ago, and still kept going. Today, we've hit 800 days of binary Usenet retention -- and we're still going.

800 days is just a number, though. None of that retention matters if we don't also have good quality. For all 800 days, we have over 99% of the articles. On top of that, when we lose servers or disks, you don't see random articles disappear temporarily. In fact, most customers don't notice anything at all. Finally, our oldest, 800-day-old articles are stored on the same servers as our newest articles. If you want to fetch posts from 800 days ago, they'll download just as fast as posts that arrived today.

Our software and systems were designed years ago to handle this level of retention. Today, we hit 800 days of retention, but we're already ready for the next 800 days and beyond. Please enjoy the retention, and keep an eye out for new features we'll be rolling out in the coming months.

Labels: 800 days, binary retention, usenet

Here at Giganews, we're celebrating being the first and only Usenet provider to reach 2 years of high-quality binary retention.

What 2 years of binary retention gets you:

• 2 years of images and files
• 10 billion+ newsgroup articles
• Over 4,000 TB of Usenet data

Think about the things that didn't even exist when the oldest accessible binary article was posted to Giganews Usenet:

• iPhone 3G, 3Gs, & 4
• Windows 7
• Golden Frog's VyprVPN
• Google's Android OS
• Mac OS X Snow Leopard
• Obama Presidency
• Our Hong Kong cluster

We've done a lot for the Giganews infrastructure in order to accommodate the amount of data storage necessary to continue growing our retention capacity. Learn more about retention and the Giganews infrastructure.

Labels: binary retention, giganews usenet, increase retention, retention, usenet, usenet service, vyprvpn

Our friends at Golden Frog have an interesting blog post discussing great reasons for browsing securely with VyprVPN personal VPN.

VyprVPN protects your online identity, keeps your location private, and restores your web browsing freedom by securing your Internet connection against third-party data interception.

You can use VyprVPN everywhere:

• Public Wi-Fi
• Private Networks
• 3G and 4G cellular networks

VyprVPN works on many devices:

• iPad
• iPhone
• Android
• laptop
• desktop

Diamond Giganews members get VyprVPN free. Check out the Golden Frog Blog to learn more about VyprVPN, or become a Diamond member for the best Usenet and VyprVPN.

Labels: giganews usenet, usenet, vyprvpn

Giganews keeps on going -- today we reached 650 days of high-quality retention, and we’ll continue growing while still providing the best Usenet experience in the world. Other providers struggle in attempt to offer long-term retention because they don’t have the infrastructure and support team to handle the data, causing their systems to crash.

We are continuously focused on creating and maintaining an exceptional system that allows us to continue adding days of retention. It takes a lot of work and the right people -- we have the space, the staff, and the in-house scalable infrastructure to store and support the data and system in order to allow for growth and adjustments.

Giganews systems are built from the ground up on our own multi-redundant network of servers. The Internet doesn’t open at 8 and close at 5, so our datacenter is staffed around-the-clock to keep things up and running.

Whether an article is 6 days old or 650, you get the same high-quality completeness, availability and unlimited speed through Giganews.

Curious to learn how Giganews does it? Learn more about how Giganews works.

We are a passionate group of Usenet users with a goal of creating and providing the most efficient and satisfactory Usenet experience. Have some feedback? We want to hear from you. Join the newsgroup conversation at giganews.general or start a discussion by commenting below.

Labels: how Giganews works, retention, usenet

Giganews is proud to announce that we are the first Usenet provider with 600 days of retention! Giganews now provides 600 days of retention with the same high quality and service Giganews customers expect. And we’re still growing! We continue to increase retention to provide Giganews customers with the best Usenet experience available.

Why Giganews Works So Well
We do it because we’re users, too (check out the newsgroup vyprvpn.giganews to see some candid discussions with Giganews employees on VyprVPN). Customers tell us everyday how frustrated they are with other Usenet providers because of poor completion rates and incompletes, especially among older articles. No one wants to deal with that. That’s why we built our service to have the same 100% availability, completeness, and unlimited speed regardless of how old the article is.

How It Works
So how do we do it? It all starts from the bottom up by building and maintaining all the systems for our services ourselves. We don’t outsource or contract this critical aspect of our Usenet service. Instead we’ve built all of our systems ourselves – from the hardware we own, the software we wrote, and the network we built. All this leads to smooth running systems providing the best Usenet experience available today. Plus, with our full time network and datacenter operations staff, we’ve got some very experienced people who make sure the Giganews service is always up and running.

We’ve hit 600 days. 700 here we come.

Have some feedback? Let us know what you think!

Labels: retention, usenet

As you've probably seen plastered across every Usenet related newsgroup and forum, Giganews recently announced a storage upgrade which will increase Giganews' retention in binary newsgroups to 200 days by the end of the summer. This is in addition to Giganews currently holding text articles for more than 1400 days.

This got us thinking about Giganews' retention growth over time. Giganews has always been a leader in Usenet and one of the primary ways we offer value to our customers is through our retention. We took a look back and documented some of our retention upgrades throughout the years....

Binary Newsgroup Retention

August 2001 - 14 days
October 2002 - 15 days
December 2003 - 30 days
August 2005 - 50 days
December 2005 - 70 days
September 2006 - 90 days
February 2007 - 100 days
April 2007 - 120 days
July 2007 - 200 days

That's a 1,328% increase in retention since 2001!

As you can see, Giganews has been very busy over the years making sure we're offering the best Usenet experience possible. If you haven't already signed up for Giganews' service try out our free trial account to see for yourself why Giganews is the leader in Usenet.

Labels: 200 days, binary, retention, usenet

Giganews would like to send out a special thank you to Woody Leonhard the author of "Windows Vista Timesaving Techniques For Dummies" for mentioning Giganews in his book!

In the chapter "Technique 20: Downloading from Newsgroups" Woody states...

"I, Personally, use Giganews. It's fast. They claim 99%+ completion. Binaries stick around for 90 days or more."

(Obviously this was written before Giganews' last retention upgrades to 100 and then to 120 days.)

The chapter is one of the most comprehensive "how to" instructions on Usenet we've ever read, and is an excellent read for anyone looking to learn how to use Usenet (especially good for first time users!).

If you're running on Vista, purchase a copy of "Windows Vista Timesaving Techniques For Dummies" and check out the mention of Giganews on page 216.

Thanks Woody!

Labels: book, newsgroups, usenet

As we were writing our recent announcement regarding our upgrade to 120 days retention, I was surprised to discover that our news servers were offering nearly 1 billion newsgroup articles in over 100,000 newsgroups.

This is a significant achievement for Usenet, which was originally designed to handle only a few dozen articles per day.

In Usenet's beginning there was a steady march of Usenet server software development centered on the evolving challenges of a growing community. These evolutions of server software were primarily spearheaded by graduate students working in their spare time to solve problems with matters such as naming conventions, performance, and portability.

Since the early days of Usenet, a lot of things have changed. Internet access in the developed world is commonplace, personal computers are widespread and readily available, and Usenet has grown to over 100,000 newsgroups.

Now that Usenet is a global network with countless participants, the landscape has changed. No longer will the collaborative efforts of graduate students working in their spare time solve the challenges of operating a Usenet network processing nearly a billion newsgroup articles. These challenges require significant investment, time, and experience.

Luckily for Giganews, we have a loyal customer base which allows us to focus our efforts on reinvesting in our network and technology. This investment has been used to develop a scalable, patent-pending news server software platform designed around plug and play storage upgrades.

It is this technology that allows Giganews to perform massive retention upgrades with no service interruptions. Seamless upgrades are one of the more understated things that we do at Giganews, and are something our company and our customers tend to take for granted.

Service improvements like our 120 day retention upgrade represent huge engineering challenges, but thanks to tremendous efforts by our programmers and engineers, Giganews is able to deliver these advancements with little to no impact on our service.

Now that Giganews has taken Usenet to the next level and is making Usenet more accessible than ever before, I wanted to take a second to thank our engineering staff for developing systems and technologies which allow Giganews to improve service for our customers with virtually no downtime. If you enjoy Giganews' service, post a comment on this blog post and let our engineers know how much you appreciate them!

Labels: articles, newsgroups, usenet

Below is a picture of Jerry from Giganews' design department with his Giganews t shirt on at the Angkor Wat temple in Siem Riep, Cambodia. Jerry snapped this photograph on his trip to Bien Hoa, Vietnam to visit family. Thanks Jerry for the cool pic!

Labels: newsgroups, travel, usenet

As you may have seen, Giganews recently announced a storage upgrade which will raise our binary retention to 100 days over the next two weeks. This got me thinking about how retention is measured and reported by various Usenet servers.

Articles on a news server are commonly stored "first in / last out". What this means is that every time a new article is posted to a Usenet system the oldest article is deleted. The oldest available article on a news server is generally what defines a news server's retention.

Some Usenet systems will also apply this "first in / last out" rule based on hierarchy.

For example, Giganews does not expire any text articles so our text retention is 1300+ days. Our binary retention (based on available storage) is 100 days. This means that it takes 100 days for a newsgroup article to drop off of our servers in the binary hierarchies.

When you're discussing a news server's retention make sure you understand exactly which hierarchy you're referencing. If you see people refer to a news server's retention based on text hierarchies then chances are they're embellishing to make the news server seem better. In reality their retention in the more challenging binary hierarchies is probably much lower.

In addition to people using text retention to embellish the quality of a news server, you'll also see some Usenet systems carry long retention rates in just a handful of newsgroups. If we use our simple definition of retention— "the oldest available article on a news server"— then this would be an accurate description of that news server's retention. Of course most people aren't going to want long retention on just a handful of newsgroups, so you could consider this misleading. Many people sign up for Giganews after using other Usenet servers which advertise long retention rates but provide those retention rates in just a couple of newsgroups.

The final thing to look out for when trying to measure retention is "invalid date headers". In some newsgroups the headers of certain articles will contain the wrong date. In the beginning of this post, I said that most news servers apply a "first in / last out" rule to newsgroups and that the oldest article on a news server defines its retention. What I didn't mention is that the "first in / last out rule" is based on article numbers (number assigned to an article based on when it is posted) and not the date displayed in the headers. This means that if an article contains a date in the header older than the retention of the news server it still may appear in the newsgroup because it hasn't been purged based on its article number.

The best measure of a news server's retention is to look at the oldest article date in *many* popular binary newsgroups. This will generally give you the best idea of the news server's retention. If you notice a few groups with longer than normal retention, the news server is either hand picking certain newsgroups to misrepresent their overall retention levels or there is an article with an invalid date header.

Labels: newsgroups, retention, usenet

As you may have already seen, Giganews recently announced support for 256 bit SSL encrypted Usenet access on port 443. The reason we decided to offer support for port 443 is that some customers were experiencing slow download speeds on port 563 due to port-based speed limiting on networks between their computer and Giganews.

One of the quickest ways to get around speed issues is to try switching ports. Many customers downloading on non-encrypted accounts have already found this out by switching their Usenet downloads from port 119 to port 80. This trick oftentimes quickly improves throughput rates when the source of the slowdown is port based-bandwidth limiting (networks limiting speeds on port 119).

There are two advantages to downloading Giganews' 256 bit SSL encrypted Usenet access over port 443. First, it will help you avoid port based speed limiting on port 563. Secondly, you may also avoid service-based speed limiting as your NNTP traffic is completely encrypted and running over a web-based port (port 443).

The goal of Giganews' support for port 443 is to offer our customers another path to access our encrypted Usenet service and to assist customers dealing with port based speed limits.

If you have experienced speed issues while downloading on port 563 and notice a speed improvement while downloading on port 443, please feel free to leave us a comment.

Labels: encryption, newsgroups, ssl, usenet

At Giganews, we love to try all sorts of gadgets and applications to make our day a little easier. Which is why when we learned about an application that allows you to access Usenet away from your desktop/laptop using any computer and a USB thumb-drive, we were itching to try it.

How does it work?

For starters, you need to download a program called MojoPac and have access to a USB thumb-drive (my drive was a twenty dollar 1GB Memorex USB thumb-drive). Note: MojoPac will ONLY run off of flash-based removable storage devices. Also, MojoPac only works on 32-bit Windows XP based OS's, sorry Mac.

After downloading MojoPac you need to run the install and point it to your thumb-drive. MojoPac will create a profile setting for you similar to creating a new user profile in Windows XP. All of your personal settings, shortcuts and … installed programs are accessed via your MojoPac "virtual desktop" stored on the thumb-drive. Awesome!

Usenet Testing
To test Usenet access, I installed NewsBin Pro and Newsleecher from my MojoPac desktop portal on my thumb-drive, and after configuring the servers, subscribing to my favorite newsgroups and some last minute tweaking, I was browsing Usenet Newsgroups without any noticeable drop in speed or performance. Pretty cool! Better yet, all of my subscribed groups, server settings, etc, are retained every time I start my news client within MojoPac. Security isn't a problem using Giganews' SSL feature and the stealthy ability of MojoPac to secure your files apart from the host computer. After unplugging my drive, no trace of my activity was left on the host computer. That's because everything resides within my MojoPac profile stored on my thumb-drive. Simple and Powerful!

With MojoPac, access Usenet Newsgroups anywhere using any Windows XP host computer and flash-based portable USB thumb-drive, now that's cool.

If you have any suggestions or tips on unique ways of accessing Usenet, comment below. We’d love to hear from you.

Labels: newsgroups, usenet

Giganews recently announced the deployment of Encrypted Usenet Access. This service enables Giganews customers to transfer all authentication, header, and article data over an SSL encrypted connection.

The obvious benefits of this service are increased security, anonymity, and privacy; however, there seems to be one more...

Securing your connection with SSL typically slows down your download speeds. The reason for this is that it takes a little bit of extra time and CPU power to encrypt and decrypt the data on each end. This extra latency in turn decreases your throughput rate; however, many of Giganews' customers are actually reporting faster download speeds.

How can this be?

SSL encryption helps beat ISP traffic shaping!

Through Giganews' newsgroups and support lists we have seen that many ISPs have implemented traffic shaping measures over the last year to curb usage on their networks.

This is typically done at the protocol or port level. For example, if your ISP wanted to curb your newsgroup usage, they could say that any traffic being transferred over the NNTP protocol on port 119 cannot exceed 500 kilobits per second per customer.

In the past the best work around for this problem was switching to port 80 (typically used for HTTP), but if your ISP is filtering on the protocol level (all NNTP traffic for example) switching to port 80 would not do you any good. Your ISP might be looking for NNTP commands and limit your connection when it sees them.

This is where SSL comes in.

Because SSL is encrypting the authentication, header, article, and protocol data passed between your computer and Giganews any protocol-based filtering measures will be ineffective. The speed difference can be very dramatic. Many Giganews customers have already commented that downloading over SSL has made a huge improvement in their Usenet performance.

If you've recently experienced slow download speeds with any NNTP based downloading (Giganews or other) which you suspect is being caused by ISP traffic shaping, try out our new encrypted Usenet service to see if you can get around it.

If you're a new customer, you can try out our 3 day free trial. If you're already an existing Giganews customer, log on to your control panel and select "Manage Service" for special offers just for you.

We're glad so many of our customers are seeing this additional benefit to our SSL service, and we're looking forward to offering even more advanced tools to improve your Giganews experience. If you have any other tips for avoiding troublesome traffic shaping, leave us a comment!

Labels: encryption, newsgroups, ssl, usenet

Get the inside scoop. Read Usenet.x-title>
On episode 28 of The Science Channel's "Beyond Tomorrow" there is a segment discussing wireless security. The expert for the segment is Adam Laurie, the founder of a company called The Bunker. The episode featured a datacenter built by Adam in an old missile silo in the United Kingdom.

Adam was speaking with the host of the show regarding the original purchase of the silo. He said "They wanted to sell it (missile silo) but at the same time they wanted to keep it secret so you had to actually know it was for sale". He went on to say that he had heard about the sale of the silo after reading discussions in "Newsgroups".

Obviously, Usenet is a great source of inside information on a variety of topics. Classifieds, real estate, dating and employment newsgroups are just a few of the groups people use to gather information for use in their personal and professional lives. Adam was able to use newsgroups to get inside information on the sale of a unique facility in a way he might not have been able to through traditional sources.

For years Usenet has been a source of information you can't readily get in other mediums. On June 5th, 1991, Kelly Goen posted the first release of PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) on Usenet on behalf of PGP's developer, Philip Zimmermann. As you may know, PGP was a huge breakthrough in digital security and was available via the Usenet community before any other widely used medium.

Whether people are using newsgroups to share information on the availability of unique facilities or to find a new job, there are countless ways to participate in the Usenet community to improve your personal or professional life.

What are some of the ways you've been able to use information from text newsgroups to purchase something unique, get a job, or otherwise get information you might not have been able to get through more traditional sources?

Labels: newsgroups, usenet

We were reviewing some of the comments on our last blog post Newsgroups vs. Usenet and we were reminded of a question we've been asking ourselves for the last 3 months or so….

"What do people who speak languages other than English use to reference Usenet related terms?"

Listed below is a breakdown of several popular Usenet related terms and the terms provided by our translation company. Are these accurate? Do you just use the English version? Feel free to comment with your thoughts….

Newsgroup
French – groupe de discussion
German – newsgroup
Dutch – nieuwsgroep
Spanish – grupo de noticias

Newsgroups
French – groupes de discussion
German – newsgroups
Dutch – nieuwsgroepen
Spanish – grupos de noticias

News Server
French – serveur de nouvelles
German – nachrichten server
Dutch – nieuwsserver
Spanish – servidor de noticias

Labels: international, newsgroups, usenet