Newsgroup Traffic

[MacArthur]

I am frustrated at the slowness of the refresh rate of NF.General.

It takes on average 10 seconds to DL a post after selecting the topic.

Other groups that I subscribe to are okay.

Can someone tell me why NF.General is like this?

Do other users experience this problem?

Randy, do you have any ideas about this?

All replies appreciated!

[DaVinci]

on dsl here and not the highest speed one, takes no more than 3
seconds to post and receice new messages, and on average 4 seconds to
post an image of 500k ro the binaries newsgroup


try pinging the news server you use.....for me this would look like

ping news.aliant.net

do that in a dos window, replacing your news server with mine (type in
a dos window) , it shouldnt be that long of a return packet

Post by MacArthur
I am frustrated at the slowness of the refresh rate of NF.General.
It takes on average 10 seconds to DL a post after selecting the topic.
Other groups that I subscribe to are okay.
Can someone tell me why NF.General is like this?
Do other users experience this problem?
Randy, do you have any ideas about this?
All replies appreciated!

[Mardon]

Post by MacArthur
I am frustrated at the slowness of the refresh rate of NF.General.
It takes on average 10 seconds to DL a post after selecting the topic.
Other groups that I subscribe to are okay.
Can someone tell me why NF.General is like this?
Do other users experience this problem?
Randy, do you have any ideas about this?
All replies appreciated!

I see the same behaviour and have wondered the same thing for a long time.
I see it on all the nf.* groups, however, not just nf.general. The non-nf.*
groups seem to refresh and download a lot faster.

[Randy Dodge]

In article <cjs6fe$smq$***@nntp-stjh-01-01.rogers.nf.net>, "MacArthur" <***@at.at> writes:


It would seem unlikely that a particular newsgroup such as nf.general would
have a different response time from other groups, assuming that you are
comparing equivalent groups (number of articles, article types (binary vs
not)), etc.

The news server software that I use allows me to vary the
article retention period several ways, and some groups may accumulate
hundreds of thousands of articles while others much less so. The number of
articles in a group can determine how fast your client program loads that
group. You might try a different client program, Mozilla's thunderbird has
an excellent news client. Is it possible that nf.general is the first group
you open when starting a news session? If so, the slow access is probably
more related to the client making the connection to the server rather than
to the particular newsgroup, since many client programs show a cache of the
last session on startup and don't actually make a real connection initially.
And even the clients (like Thunderbird) that show an update upon startup
don't actually download the headers of the articles until you pick a
newsgroup.

What client program are you using? Does it have any options to show you
what going on in the background?

Post by MacArthur
I am frustrated at the slowness of the refresh rate of NF.General.
It takes on average 10 seconds to DL a post after selecting the topic.
Other groups that I subscribe to are okay.
Can someone tell me why NF.General is like this?
Do other users experience this problem?
Randy, do you have any ideas about this?
All replies appreciated!
--

[MacArthur]

Post by Randy Dodge
It would seem unlikely that a particular newsgroup such as nf.general would
have a different response time from other groups, assuming that you are
comparing equivalent groups (number of articles, article types (binary vs
not)), etc.
The news server software that I use allows me to vary the
article retention period several ways, and some groups may accumulate
hundreds of thousands of articles while others much less so. The number of
articles in a group can determine how fast your client program loads that
group. You might try a different client program, Mozilla's thunderbird has
an excellent news client. Is it possible that nf.general is the first group
you open when starting a news session? If so, the slow access is probably
more related to the client making the connection to the server rather than
to the particular newsgroup, since many client programs show a cache of the
last session on startup and don't actually make a real connection initially.
And even the clients (like Thunderbird) that show an update upon startup
don't actually download the headers of the articles until you pick a
newsgroup.
What client program are you using? Does it have any options to show you
what going on in the background?

Randy

I use OE 6 and its not the client. I do find a difference among groups. I
just browsed sci.geo.satellite-nav and each post loads immediately. I have
OE set to download all headers and I peruse the threads that interest me. I
subscribe to several groups and the response time with NF.General is worse.

It isn't consistently slow, its usually slow. Its almost 56k dialup like at
times. Last Friday it was perfect.
--
Have a nice day,

M

Post by Randy Dodge

Post by MacArthur
I am frustrated at the slowness of the refresh rate of NF.General.
It takes on average 10 seconds to DL a post after selecting the topic.
Other groups that I subscribe to are okay.
Can someone tell me why NF.General is like this?
Do other users experience this problem?
Randy, do you have any ideas about this?
All replies appreciated!
--

--
Randy Dodge, Manager Technical Support, Computing & Communications
Memorial University, St. John's, Newfoundland & Labrador Canada
randy at mun dot ca

[wheresmytea]

Post by MacArthur
I use OE 6 and its not the client. I do find a difference among
groups. I just browsed sci.geo.satellite-nav and each post loads
immediately. I have OE set to download all headers and I peruse the
threads that interest me. I subscribe to several groups and the
response time with NF.General is worse.

I find a significant difference as well, and I don't think it's the
client either.

FWIW, I've experienced the same thing regardless of whether I'm
connected through Aliant or Rogers, on a machine running Windows XP Pro
or Mac OS X, or using OE (Windows or Mac), Thunderbird (Windows or Mac)
or MT-Newswatcher (Mac).

The lag is peculiar to nf.general, for whatever reason.

[MacArthur]

TY. That is my experience as well.
--
Have a nice day,

M

Post by wheresmytea

Post by MacArthur
I use OE 6 and its not the client. I do find a difference among
groups. I just browsed sci.geo.satellite-nav and each post loads
immediately. I have OE set to download all headers and I peruse the
threads that interest me. I subscribe to several groups and the
response time with NF.General is worse.

I find a significant difference as well, and I don't think it's the
client either.
FWIW, I've experienced the same thing regardless of whether I'm
connected through Aliant or Rogers, on a machine running Windows XP Pro
or Mac OS X, or using OE (Windows or Mac), Thunderbird (Windows or Mac)
or MT-Newswatcher (Mac).
The lag is peculiar to nf.general, for whatever reason.

[TKO]

Post by MacArthur
TY. That is my experience as well.

It was brutal last night for a while. I gave up on it.

[Randy Dodge]

In article <cl1s74$b54$***@nntp-stjh-01-01.rogers.nf.net>, "MacArthur" <***@at.at> writes:

I don't think sci.geo.satellite-nav is a fair comparison with nf.general .
We're trying to establish if there's a connection between the newsgroup
size and the response time that you see. I believe Aliant has perhaps
80,000 articles in its copy of nf.general so you need to compare groups
with similar size. So, open nf.general and determine how many articles
there are and how many you've read. Now find a similar sized newsgroup
and enter it, compare it's response time to what you had with nf.general

I see response time from my news server relative to the newsgroup size and
nf.general loads slower than groups with only a few hundred items, which
is what I expect to see.

Post by MacArthur
Randy
I use OE 6 and its not the client. I do find a difference among groups. I
just browsed sci.geo.satellite-nav and each post loads immediately. I have
OE set to download all headers and I peruse the threads that interest me. I
subscribe to several groups and the response time with NF.General is worse.
It isn't consistently slow, its usually slow. Its almost 56k dialup like at
times. Last Friday it was perfect.
--
Have a nice day,

[MacArthur]

Randy,

I also subscribe to alt.windows98, microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics and
other high traffic zones and find no problems.

I have no idea how big/busy various groups are; I notice that from the time
that I select a header in NF.General until the message is displayed/dled is
inordinately long compared to other groups to which I subscribe.

Headers are downloaded at a satisfactory rate; it's the 5-15 seconds that
it takes to display the message that I find problematic.

I check the groups that I subscribe to on almost a daily basis. (Yeah, I
need a life:)) I mark all as read after I read those posts in which I am
interested. It seems to me that once the unread headers are downloaded in a
subsequent session, that a ~10 second lag for each message download is S L
O W!

As a final note, this is not consistent. There are times (infrequent) that
this group's response time is no different than other groups that I use.

AMEN.
--
Have a nice day,

M

Post by Randy Dodge
I don't think sci.geo.satellite-nav is a fair comparison with nf.general .
We're trying to establish if there's a connection between the newsgroup
size and the response time that you see. I believe Aliant has perhaps
80,000 articles in its copy of nf.general so you need to compare groups
with similar size. So, open nf.general and determine how many articles
there are and how many you've read. Now find a similar sized newsgroup
and enter it, compare it's response time to what you had with nf.general
I see response time from my news server relative to the newsgroup size and
nf.general loads slower than groups with only a few hundred items, which
is what I expect to see.

Post by MacArthur
Randy
I use OE 6 and its not the client. I do find a difference among groups.
I
just browsed sci.geo.satellite-nav and each post loads immediately. I have
OE set to download all headers and I peruse the threads that interest me.
I
subscribe to several groups and the response time with NF.General is worse.
It isn't consistently slow, its usually slow. Its almost 56k dialup like at
times. Last Friday it was perfect.
--
Have a nice day,

--
Randy Dodge, Manager Technical Support, Computing & Communications
Memorial University, St. John's, Newfoundland & Labrador Canada
randy at mun dot ca

[gwg]

I find through the Rogers news server it's slow, but through Aliant very
fast

Rogers = home connection

Aliant = work connection

Post by MacArthur
Randy,
I also subscribe to alt.windows98, microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics and
other high traffic zones and find no problems.
I have no idea how big/busy various groups are; I notice that from the time
that I select a header in NF.General until the message is displayed/dled is
inordinately long compared to other groups to which I subscribe.
Headers are downloaded at a satisfactory rate; it's the 5-15 seconds that
it takes to display the message that I find problematic.
I check the groups that I subscribe to on almost a daily basis. (Yeah, I
need a life:)) I mark all as read after I read those posts in which I am
interested. It seems to me that once the unread headers are downloaded in a
subsequent session, that a ~10 second lag for each message download is S L
O W!
As a final note, this is not consistent. There are times (infrequent) that
this group's response time is no different than other groups that I use.
AMEN.
--
Have a nice day,
M

Post by Randy Dodge
I don't think sci.geo.satellite-nav is a fair comparison with nf.general .
We're trying to establish if there's a connection between the newsgroup
size and the response time that you see. I believe Aliant has perhaps
80,000 articles in its copy of nf.general so you need to compare groups
with similar size. So, open nf.general and determine how many articles
there are and how many you've read. Now find a similar sized newsgroup
and enter it, compare it's response time to what you had with nf.general
I see response time from my news server relative to the newsgroup size and
nf.general loads slower than groups with only a few hundred items, which
is what I expect to see.

Post by MacArthur
Randy
I use OE 6 and its not the client. I do find a difference among groups.
I
just browsed sci.geo.satellite-nav and each post loads immediately. I have
OE set to download all headers and I peruse the threads that interest me.
I
subscribe to several groups and the response time with NF.General is worse.
It isn't consistently slow, its usually slow. Its almost 56k dialup

like

Post by MacArthur

Post by Randy Dodge

Post by MacArthur
at
times. Last Friday it was perfect.
--
Have a nice day,

--
Randy Dodge, Manager Technical Support, Computing & Communications
Memorial University, St. John's, Newfoundland & Labrador Canada
randy at mun dot ca

[Stephen Martin]

I have the exact some problem only for the nf.* groups. When this exact
thread was going a few months ago I did as Randy suggested and serveral of
the groups you're been subscribed too for months are as big or bigger then
nf.* and loaded in a faction of the time.

Checked again today after reading this thread and the same result. The other
group load much faster for some reason.

Stephen Martin

Post by MacArthur
I am frustrated at the slowness of the refresh rate of NF.General.
It takes on average 10 seconds to DL a post after selecting the topic.
Other groups that I subscribe to are okay.
Can someone tell me why NF.General is like this?
Do other users experience this problem?
Randy, do you have any ideas about this?
All replies appreciated!
--
Have a nice day,
M

[craig]

Why don't you just try another client like Randy suggested? 'I use OE 6
and its not the client', well how about taking the 10 minutes to install
Thunderbird and trying to use it's newsnet client? Then you can really
prove all of us, including randy wrong.

Using Pan gives me awsome response time and I've never ever had problems
with slow loading of messages on any of the nf.* groups. I don't download
the full msg, just the headers and until I click on the message, then it
downloads and displays.

craig.

Post by MacArthur
I am frustrated at the slowness of the refresh rate of NF.General.
It takes on average 10 seconds to DL a post after selecting the topic.
Other groups that I subscribe to are okay.
Can someone tell me why NF.General is like this?
Do other users experience this problem?
Randy, do you have any ideas about this?
All replies appreciated!

[MacArthur]

Did you notice the date of the original post?

"On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 16:27:48 -0230, MacArthur wrote:"

Rogers has since moved the newsgroups to giganews and everything is as swift
as it should be.

Thanks for the lesson in downloading messages, but I have been using usenet
for about 12 years. You?
--
Have a nice day,

M

"Nil carborundum illegitimi"

Post by craig
Why don't you just try another client like Randy suggested? 'I use OE 6
and its not the client', well how about taking the 10 minutes to install
Thunderbird and trying to use it's newsnet client? Then you can really
prove all of us, including randy wrong.
Using Pan gives me awsome response time and I've never ever had problems
with slow loading of messages on any of the nf.* groups. I don't download
the full msg, just the headers and until I click on the message, then it
downloads and displays.
craig.

Post by MacArthur
I am frustrated at the slowness of the refresh rate of NF.General.
It takes on average 10 seconds to DL a post after selecting the topic.
Other groups that I subscribe to are okay.
Can someone tell me why NF.General is like this?
Do other users experience this problem?
Randy, do you have any ideas about this?
All replies appreciated!

[craig]

Yeah just as I hit enter and checked to see that it got posted. oh well.

Post by MacArthur
Did you notice the date of the original post?
"On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 16:27:48 -0230, MacArthur wrote:"
Rogers has since moved the newsgroups to giganews and everything is as swift
as it should be.
Thanks for the lesson in downloading messages, but I have been using usenet
for about 12 years. You?