Tips and Tricks

 

 

 

We've implemented robust support for using multiple news servers.  If you have multiple servers configured, NewsBin will download the headers from all enabled servers and will keep a list of all the parts of a post across all the servers.  The trick is to always have your fastest server first in the list (in the Groups/Servers Window).  NewsBin will only go to the other servers if a part is missing or if the entire post is missing from the first server.

If you want to dig deeper, right click on a post and select "Properties".  This will show you which servers have which parts of a post.  You can fine tune the download by deleting certain parts from this list that belong to a server that is unreliable (or temporarily unreliable).

NewsBin allows you to maintain multiple simultaneous connections to your news server.  Many news servers now are limiting the number of active connections you can have.  If you have hit your limit, you will see error messages in the "Status Messages" tab.  NewsBin allows up to 8 simultaneous connections (it actually will use 9 if headers are being downloaded, too).  Using all 8 connections does not necessarily mean you'll get the best datarate.  There is a point of diminishing returns due to protocol overhead.  With asymmetric internet connections such as Satellite, ADSL, and some most cable systems, you may saturate your uplink (usually much lower datarate than your downlink) with network traffic - acknowledgments of packets.  The answer is to experiment.  Use one reliable server, queue up a significant number of downloads from the same group, and watch the datarate guage.  Start with one connection and work your way up, 30-60 seconds at a time, watching the datarate.  You most likely will see either a bell curve or a steady climb in datarate but leveling off.  In our testing against a news server running on the same machine as NewsBin, we've attained datarates of 80Mbps with only 4 connections.  The bottleneck for achieving high datarates will either be the quality of your internet connection or the quality of the news server.  Be aware that many news servers are limiting their per/connection datarates now.  Supernews has a 128Kbps/connection limit and also a 4 connection limit.  This means, no matter how fast your internet connection is, the best you can do is 512Kbps.  The only news server we know of with no datarate limit and a high connection limit is UseNetServer.

To optimize use of high latency connections, NewsBin provides a setting on the "Advanced" tab of the "Options" screen.  A high latency connection is a connection where the download datarate is much higher than the upload datarate.  The setting we provide is the "TCP Window Size".  This setting configures the network connection to send more data down before acknowledging it on the slow uplink.  For example, say you have a 100MB download and your TCP window size is 16K.  You will be acknowledging 6250 packets with your slow uplink connection.  If you crank your TCP window size up to 50K, you will only be sending 2000 acknowledgments.  The tradeoff is that there is more room for bit errors in 50K than in 16K.  On a clean link like ISDN, ADSL, and possibly Satellite on a clear day, you can take advantage of large TCP window sizes.  On dialup, marginal cable modems, wireless modems, or satellite on a rainy day, you better keep your TCP window size smaller.

NewsBin saves all the parts to multipart posts as it is downloading.  These parts will stay in the "Spool" directory until the entire file is successfully downloaded or until 14 days elapse.  If your download gets interrupted for some reason, NewsBin will pick up where it left off - particularly useful when downloading MP3's or large movies!

 

NewsBin will save headers for the number of days you have set in the "Max Record Age" field under the "Options" window. It stores the headers in a directory underneath the NewsBin directory called "records". It is automatically purged based on your "Max Record Age" setting.

The "First Time Records" field tells NewsBin how far back to go the very first time you hit a group. It is currently a global setting that applies to all groups.  Each subsequent run, NewsBin will display all the saved records (back to the "Max Record Age" setting) and then only pull new records from the server.  When hitting primarily multimedia groups with large multipart posts, you may benefit from a higher number like 5000 or 10000. The picture groups work fine with 1000 or so.

Our #1 technical support request is due to people running too many connections against a connection limited news server.  Whenever NewsBin does something unexpected or is not working the way you expect, check the "Status Messages" tab.

The #2 technical support request is due to a news server being down or poorly maintained.  Again, this will be obvious in the "Status Messages" tab.  If you get any kind of connect error or socket I/O error then you either have the news server name typed incorrectly, DNS is down, or the news server is having problems.  Occasionally, news servers will mis-report which records are available on the server or, the header will be available before the body is fully uploaded by the poster.  In these circumstances, a second try in a few minutes may clear things up.

One of our users has volunteered to maintain a list of @Home's servers.  Following this list will help you figure out how to access many @Home servers with NewsBin and receive a better completion rate of multi-part posts by allowing the many @Home servers to fill in the holes for each other.  His pages are here.