Re: Faulty news feeds

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <5pdphl$i55@post.gsfc.nasa.gov>,
Geraldine Wright <gaw717@www710.gsfc.nasa.gov> wrote:

   [Tip: pres return every 70 or so characters, not 79+. Makes it much
easier to quote. Also, comp.sys.appl2 is more appropriate for this, so
the thread has been redirected there.]

>I would like to throw out a question to the csa2 community. Is
>everybody having trouble with the newsfeeds serving their ISP's?

   Nope. visi.com has a great newsfeed and appears to get all messages
in the csa2 hierarchy pretty much in order (i.e. responses show up
after the original message). Visi's feed is among the top (10? 50?
100? forget offhand) newsfeeds in the world according to some stats
the admin was throwing around a bit ago.

>More than half of the messages I post from home are lost. If the
>problem is endemic to the entire Usenet system, I guess I'll have to
>live with it.

   Remember that pretty much all usenet servers expire messages after
some predetermined time, so don't expeect your messages to stick
around forever. [And only things like www.dejanews.com attemprt to
keep stufff around 'forever'] Talk to your local news admin to find
out exactly what the expire time is on comp.sys.apple2* If there's
some local interest, you may be able to have them increase it for that
hierarchy.

>If it is just one newsfeed, I should be able to fix it by switching
>to another ISP.

   You may want to check out www.zippo.com or www.superzippo.com. I've
heard that those are pretty good newsservers for those whose local
access stinks. Superzippo is supposed to be a pay service with longer
expire times. I've never used either (since visi's feed is so good),
but some friends have recommended zippo.

Nathan Mates

--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein