For those of you that might know the inner-workings of the Internet, you might be familiar with a section of the internet called Usenet. Wikipedia refers to Usenet as a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network of the same name. It was conceived by Duke University Graduate Students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979. Users read and post email-like messages (called “articles”) to a number of distributed newsgroups, categories that resemble bulletin board systems in most respects. The medium is sustained among a large number of servers, which store and forward messages with one another. Usenet is of significant cultural importance in the networked world, having given rise to, or popularized, many widely recognized concepts and terms such as “FAQ” and “spam”.
I subscribe to a pay-service (one of many pay services) called Giganews ($20/month). These pay services offer many days retention of articles, in addition to fast download speeds.
At my house, I have a new fiber optic connection from Verizon, called Fios, which, at the current time, allows me 15Mbit of download connection. In lay-speak, a 15Mbit down connection is the equivalent of transferring the content of a full CD (~700 megabytes) in about 7 minutes. Or, about 3.5 seconds to download 1 song from iTunes.
Anyway, Usenet is used for many purposes, and I use it to download SHN and FLAC (sound files that don’t get compressed so there is 100% digital quality) of live shows from bands that allow taping, such as Phish and DMB.
Giganews has had a pricing structure that I’ve loved since day 1 – “unlimited downloads for $24 per month.”
Apparently “unlimited” doesn’t always mean “unlimited”.
I was “capped this week”, and by that I mean I could no longer download at the high speeds I just explained. Instead, I was capped at 20% of that maximum, though I’m still paying the same price. After some research, it appears that Giganews capps the “heavy users” who exceed even the highest bandwidth. I do download about 500GB/month, but I do it during off hours (middle of the night). I was also never informed that “unlimited” has its limits.
After emailing technical support, they told me that not only do they not see a problem with my account, but they do not cap users. Unfortunately, other people have experienced the same as me shown here.
So, if you’re thinking of a subscription based 3rd party usenet provider, do not go with Giganews.