Newsgroups and their messages

J

Jimmy

I hope if someone can not answer this I can be directed to a proper forum. I
am a subscriber to Comcast which has just changed the server(I hope I have
this terminology right) to newsgroups.Comcast.net and now I guess this is
supposed to be some sort of improvement. However I am having difficulties
that can not be addressed by their support people(no news here). In addition
to being presented with the logon dialog box numerous times I now see that
my post is not even viewable whatsoever. I can find it with Google and
continue a thread from their but never see it on the appropriate NG from
outlook express. This problem has just started with this change and I am
hoping someone can help out with this issue.

TIA
J.
 
H

Husky

I hope if someone can not answer this I can be directed to a proper forum. I
am a subscriber to Comcast which has just changed the server(I hope I have
this terminology right) to newsgroups.Comcast.net and now I guess this is
supposed to be some sort of improvement. However I am having difficulties
that can not be addressed by their support people(no news here). In addition
to being presented with the logon dialog box numerous times I now see that
my post is not even viewable whatsoever. I can find it with Google and
continue a thread from their but never see it on the appropriate NG from
outlook express. This problem has just started with this change and I am
hoping someone can help out with this issue.

TIA
J.
Click to expand...

open tools>accounts>news>
select ADD
top line insert newsgroups.Comcast.net <-- this sounds odd,
since it's normally NEWS not newsgroups.

Name: enter the name you want to be called in that news group..

email address: I don't know if spoof addresses work. I have OE, but don't use
it as primary. You could try a spoof address, but if you have to login and it's
going by this address, you'll need to insert your real email address.

2nd tab SERVER
server name: newsgroups.Comcast.net or maybe news. It should be available from
the Comcast website for setups.
This server requires me to login: Checked
account name: whatever it is. maybe (e-mail address removed)
Password: Whatever you use to login to your ISP unless you've created a
separate one for your news accounts.
Remember password. I'd say yes unless you want to hand enter account and
password every time it's run.

3rd tab CONNECTION
You'll have to handle this yourself, mines grayed out. I use whatever
connection is open.

4th tab ADVANCED
I haven't touched mine. It should work as is.
 
S

Santa

Jimmy said:
I hope if someone can not answer this I can be directed to a proper forum. I
am a subscriber to Comcast which has just changed the server(I hope I have
this terminology right) to newsgroups.Comcast.net
Click to expand...


Comcast Never notified me of This Change !!! it is still Giganews for Me

and now I guess this is
 
V

Vanguard

Jimmy said:
I hope if someone can not answer this I can be directed to a proper
forum. I am a subscriber to Comcast which has just changed the server(I
hope I have this terminology right) to newsgroups.Comcast.net and now I
guess this is supposed to be some sort of improvement. However I am
having difficulties that can not be addressed by their support
people(no news here). In addition to being presented with the logon
dialog box numerous times I now see that my post is not even viewable
whatsoever. I can find it with Google and continue a thread from their
but never see it on the appropriate NG from outlook express. This
problem has just started with this change and I am hoping someone can
help out with this issue.

TIA
J.
Click to expand...


Were you an ATTBI customer that got acquired by Comcast? Were you still
using the old ATTBI newsgroups server (netnews.comcast.net)? If so, and
because Comcast never wanted to get stuck managing NNTP servers, they
dropped that server. They prefer to contract out their NNTP service to
Giganews, so you have to open a Giganews account as a Comcast customer
to get the free *basic* Giganews service. Bandwidth was unlimited on
the old ATTBI/Comcast NNTP server but the basic Giganews account is
1GB/month and headers count in the download quota. Comcast promised an
increase to 2GB/month with header downloads not counting against the
quota but that really was a change by Giganews in their basic service
and doesn't take effect until the end of your quota cycle (check the
Giganews Control Panel by logging in at http://www.giganews.com/ to see
when your quota cycle next refreshes).

Their help page at http://online.comcast.net/giganews/ says to use
newsgroups.comcast.com (216.196.97.136) for the NNTP server (and says
the same thing in the link it has to a FAQ), yet that is the same IP
address as the old netnews.comcast.net server that they just killed.
Maybe they are trying to forward old users to the Giganews server. I
knew Comcast was going to kill the ATTIB newsgroups server they got
stuck with plus even their representative acknowledged that the old NNTP
server was very low priority for maintainence (I'd report problems that
were very slow to get addressed). So I signed up for a
Comcast-contracted Giganews account and had access to both NNTP servers
until the start of this month when Comcast killed off the old ATTBI
server. When I signed up for the Giganews account to get a cc######
username, I was told to use the following IP name for their NNTP server:

news.giganews.com

The Comcast article mentioned above doesn't really tell you anything
about how to open an account at Giganews. All it talks about is how to
configure to use the Giganews account, not how to signup. However, at
http://faq.comcast.net/faq/answer.jsp?name=17505&cat=Newsgroups&subcategory=1,
apparently you don't have to signup, anymore. You just use your
(e-mail address removed) to login to Giganews (but it must be your primary
or owner account's username you use to login, not a member account's
username).

I had actually used up my 1GB/month quota in the Giganews account that I
had signed up for while testing it by downloading headers, so that
account is dead until the quota cycle date. I just created a new NNTP
account in OE which goes to newsgroups.comcast.net and uses the primary
Comcast account (owner account) to login in, I subscribed to some
newsgroups, and I could participate. So either going in via
newsgroups.comcast.net got me the increased 2GB/month quota (over the
1.07GB that I used up in testing the changeover which locked me out when
connecting to news.giganews.com with my cc###### username) but the
Giganews Control Panel doesn't reflect my use, or that gave me a
different account then the Giganews account that I had to signup for
before. I'm addicted to newsgroups so I don't want to consume another
1GB of bandwidth just to see if one or both accounts then go dead.

As a test, I downloaded headers in the newsgroups.comcast.net account in
OE and then checked the Giganews Control Panel to check my transfer
stats on my old cc###### account. No change in transfer stats, but then
the new NNTP service isn't supposed to count headers against the monthly
quota so that didn't prove anything (if it had changed then I would know
newsgroups.comcast.net using (e-mail address removed) for login was the same
account as using news.giganews.com using cc###### to login). So then I
synchronize one of the newsgroups (set to "All Messages") to force
downloading their bodies. I went off to lunch since this was going to
take awhile. When I got back, I again checked transfer stats by logging
into the Giganews Control Panel but the stats had not changed. So
connecting to newsgroups.comcast.net using (e-mail address removed) to
login was not affecting my Comcast-contracted Giganews account logged in
using news.giganews.com and my cc###### username. So Comcast & Giganews
still have some stuff to iron out.

Comcast is still in a transition state regarding newsgroups, losing the
old ATTBI server, and redirecting through Comcast to pre-contracted
accounts at Giganews without a signup step. It looks like the "option"
(and joy) of signing up for a Giganews account is no longer required or
even possible. It could be a month, or more, before they iron out their
new setup for NNTP.
 
V

Vanguard

By the way, after defining a news account that uses
newsgroups.comcast.net to use the Comcast authentication server to get
at the Comcast-contracted Giganews NNTP service, I've had the
frustration, too, of getting the bogus login popup from OE saying to
enter my login credentials. This had nothing to do with bad credentials
but everything to do with their authentication server timing out and
returning a 520 error code, and all OE can figure out is that the
credentials might've been bad so that's why you get OE prompting you to
correct your login credentials (which were correct in the first place).
Nothing of the login credentials gets included in your posts. It is
used simply to get past their authentication server and then pass you on
to Giganews, so you can still dictate what e-mail address, if any, gets
included in your posts. You can still munge or spoof your e-mail
address in the news account you define in OE but you need to specify
your real e-mail address (for your primary or owner account) in the
login credentials.

You used to have to signup for a Comcast-contracted Giganews account.
That one was working for me just great (until I exceeded the 1GB/month
quota despite the promise it was to get upped to 2GB/month). Now
Comcast users don't have to signup for the Comcast-contracted Giganews
service which means that either Comcast had to pre-define all the
Giganews accounts or they get an unfettered connect to Giganews and use
their own authentication server (newgroups.comcast.net) to make sure a
Comcast user is trying to use Giganews. So their authentication setup
is screwed up.

Complaining to Comcast will be the only way to force them to iron out
the kinks. Comcast doesn't want to support NNTP. As far as they are
concerned, they're stuck with it but it gets lowest priority. Make the
squeaky wheel even louder. Complain to them.
 
J

Jimmy

Husky said:
open tools>accounts>news>
select ADD
top line insert newsgroups.Comcast.net <-- this sounds
odd, since it's normally NEWS not newsgroups.
Click to expand...

This was a change that Comcast made this month. I did try to get help from
support but all they were able to do was help configure what I already had
done correctly. I do get all the groups I had before their change but now I
get the added problems I mentioned. I did remove the setup and rebuild and I
have not gotten the nag screen yet but I still notice that my messages
either don't appear at all or they disappear moments later only in some
groups.


Thanks

J.
 
J

Jimmy

Santa said:
Comcast Never notified me of This Change !!! it is still Giganews
for Me
Click to expand...
I had to look at old emails I received from them to see that I had that
notice. I block them anyway as I get an error when they send me their adds
for TV and such. Everything was working fine until just the other day with
the older settings so I don't really know how these servers work anyway. I
am sure I can get around this problem eventually as I don't seem to have
this happening on every system I have running here. I have one that works ok
so far. I had thought it might be an SP2 issue as that has been the only
thing I have changed in sometime. I did hear tech support mention Giganews
but I have not seen that name anywhere in my setup experiences.

J.
 
J

Jimmy

Vanguard said:
Were you an ATTBI customer that got acquired by Comcast? Were you
still using the old ATTBI newsgroups server (netnews.comcast.net)? If so,
and because Comcast never wanted to get stuck managing NNTP
servers, they dropped that server. They prefer to contract out their
NNTP service to Giganews, so you have to open a Giganews account as a
Comcast customer to get the free *basic* Giganews service. Bandwidth
was unlimited on the old ATTBI/Comcast NNTP server but the basic
Giganews account is 1GB/month and headers count in the download
quota. Comcast promised an increase to 2GB/month with header
downloads not counting against the quota but that really was a change
by Giganews in their basic service and doesn't take effect until the
end of your quota cycle (check the Giganews Control Panel by logging
in at http://www.giganews.com/ to see when your quota cycle next
refreshes).
Their help page at http://online.comcast.net/giganews/ says to use
newsgroups.comcast.com (216.196.97.136) for the NNTP server (and says
the same thing in the link it has to a FAQ), yet that is the same IP
address as the old netnews.comcast.net server that they just killed.
Maybe they are trying to forward old users to the Giganews server. I
knew Comcast was going to kill the ATTIB newsgroups server they got
stuck with plus even their representative acknowledged that the old
NNTP server was very low priority for maintainence (I'd report
problems that were very slow to get addressed). So I signed up for a
Comcast-contracted Giganews account and had access to both NNTP
servers until the start of this month when Comcast killed off the old
ATTBI server. When I signed up for the Giganews account to get a
cc###### username, I was told to use the following IP name for their
NNTP server:
news.giganews.com

The Comcast article mentioned above doesn't really tell you anything
about how to open an account at Giganews. All it talks about is how
to configure to use the Giganews account, not how to signup. However, at
http://faq.comcast.net/faq/answer.jsp?name=17505&cat=Newsgroups&subcategory=1,
apparently you don't have to signup, anymore. You just use your
(e-mail address removed) to login to Giganews (but it must be your
primary or owner account's username you use to login, not a member
account's username).
I had actually used up my 1GB/month quota in the Giganews account
that I had signed up for while testing it by downloading headers, so
that account is dead until the quota cycle date. I just created a
new NNTP account in OE which goes to newsgroups.comcast.net and uses
the primary Comcast account (owner account) to login in, I subscribed
to some newsgroups, and I could participate. So either going in via
newsgroups.comcast.net got me the increased 2GB/month quota (over the
1.07GB that I used up in testing the changeover which locked me out
when connecting to news.giganews.com with my cc###### username) but
the Giganews Control Panel doesn't reflect my use, or that gave me a
different account then the Giganews account that I had to signup for
before. I'm addicted to newsgroups so I don't want to consume another
1GB of bandwidth just to see if one or both accounts then go dead.

As a test, I downloaded headers in the newsgroups.comcast.net account
in OE and then checked the Giganews Control Panel to check my transfer
stats on my old cc###### account. No change in transfer stats, but
then the new NNTP service isn't supposed to count headers against the
monthly quota so that didn't prove anything (if it had changed then I
would know newsgroups.comcast.net using (e-mail address removed) for
login was the same account as using news.giganews.com using cc######
to login). So then I synchronize one of the newsgroups (set to "All
Messages") to force downloading their bodies. I went off to lunch
since this was going to take awhile. When I got back, I again
checked transfer stats by logging into the Giganews Control Panel but
the stats had not changed. So connecting to newsgroups.comcast.net
using (e-mail address removed) to login was not affecting my
Comcast-contracted Giganews account logged in using news.giganews.com
and my cc###### username. So Comcast & Giganews still have some
stuff to iron out.
Comcast is still in a transition state regarding newsgroups, losing
the old ATTBI server, and redirecting through Comcast to
pre-contracted accounts at Giganews without a signup step. It looks
like the "option" (and joy) of signing up for a Giganews account is
no longer required or even possible. It could be a month, or more,
before they iron out their new setup for NNTP.
Click to expand...

Ok, thanks Vanguard. This was very informative and helpful. I am an old
ATTBI user and before that it was Mediaone. I can see that this new Comcast
configuration is probably going to take some tweaks on their part as I have
to listen to a recorded report about slowness when I wait for them to get to
their first level of support.

J.
 
B

Bert Kinney

Hi Jimmy,

You can setup multiple accounts in OE. I would suggest using the
server I posted to connect to these newsgroups.
 
J

Jimmy

Vanguard said:
By the way, after defining a news account that uses
newsgroups.comcast.net to use the Comcast authentication server to get
at the Comcast-contracted Giganews NNTP service, I've had the
frustration, too, of getting the bogus login popup from OE saying to
enter my login credentials. This had nothing to do with bad
credentials but everything to do with their authentication server
timing out and returning a 520 error code, and all OE can figure out
is that the credentials might've been bad so that's why you get OE
prompting you to correct your login credentials (which were correct
in the first place). Nothing of the login credentials gets included
in your posts. It is used simply to get past their authentication
server and then pass you on to Giganews, so you can still dictate
what e-mail address, if any, gets included in your posts. You can
still munge or spoof your e-mail address in the news account you
define in OE but you need to specify your real e-mail address (for
your primary or owner account) in the login credentials.

You used to have to signup for a Comcast-contracted Giganews account.
That one was working for me just great (until I exceeded the 1GB/month
quota despite the promise it was to get upped to 2GB/month). Now
Comcast users don't have to signup for the Comcast-contracted Giganews
service which means that either Comcast had to pre-define all the
Giganews accounts or they get an unfettered connect to Giganews and
use their own authentication server (newgroups.comcast.net) to make
sure a Comcast user is trying to use Giganews. So their
authentication setup is screwed up.

Complaining to Comcast will be the only way to force them to iron out
the kinks. Comcast doesn't want to support NNTP. As far as they are
concerned, they're stuck with it but it gets lowest priority. Make
the squeaky wheel even louder. Complain to them.
Click to expand...

I have called them several times and I know they probably already know why I
am calling back again the next time. I guess there is no harm in bugging
them as often as I have to. I haven't noticed any difficulty with a limit
and just can't equate the 2gig size to messages that seem so small. I guess
I will have to give that some thought or conduct similar test that you have
done. This was the first conclusion they came to when I informed them of my
problems and I have never hear this mentioned in the years I have had
service. This must be a problem for some and so I assume it is one cutback
of more to come. I hope they don't try older money tricks like charging for
home networking like before and/or cut back of the web space. Maybe even a
yearly contract can be expected like the cell phone companies and DSL
providers.

J.
 
R

Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers

Yup, still here. Still helping - I hope.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
P

PA Bear

Jimmy wrote:
This was a change that Comcast made this month. I did try to get help from
support but all they were able to do was help configure what I already had
done correctly. I do get all the groups I had before their change but now
I
get the added problems I mentioned. I did remove the setup and rebuild and
I
have not gotten the nag screen yet but I still notice that my messages
either don't appear at all or they disappear moments later only in some
groups.
Click to expand...

OE Tools>Options>Read>Get XX headers at a time* (uncheck)

OE View>Current View>Hide Read Messages (uncheck, temporarily; also check
other settings here)

Some newsservers delete posts after only a few hours. The MS newsserver in
contrast keeps posts available for 90+ days.

*You may set this option as high as 1,000 (or disable it altogether). For
newsgroups with thousands of posts on the server, start with 1,000.
Right-click on the newsgroup in Folders pane>Synchronization Settings>
select New Messages Only. Now every time you open the newsgroup (or hit
F5), you will download the next-newest set of headers/messages.

When you feel you've downloaded enough headers/messages, again right-click
on the newsgroup in Folders pane and select Catch Up Now. This will Mark as
Read all messages on the server, including ones you've not yet downloaded.
Now return to "Get XXX headers at a time" and uncheck the option completely;
then compact the folder.

From now on, OE will only download headers/messages posted to the server
since you last checked (polled) for messages.

You should probably visit this page, too:
http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm#cleannews (lotsa good stuff
there).
--
OE6-specific newsgroup:
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6_outlookexpress

~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-Windows (IE/OE), AH-VSOP

Inside Outlook Express
http://www.insideoe.com
 
J

Jimmy

PA said:
Jimmy wrote:


OE Tools>Options>Read>Get XX headers at a time* (uncheck)

OE View>Current View>Hide Read Messages (uncheck, temporarily; also
check other settings here)

Some newsservers delete posts after only a few hours. The MS
newsserver in contrast keeps posts available for 90+ days.

*You may set this option as high as 1,000 (or disable it altogether).
For newsgroups with thousands of posts on the server, start with
1,000. Right-click on the newsgroup in Folders pane>Synchronization
Settings> select New Messages Only. Now every time you open the
newsgroup (or hit F5), you will download the next-newest set of
headers/messages.
When you feel you've downloaded enough headers/messages, again
right-click on the newsgroup in Folders pane and select Catch Up Now.
This will Mark as Read all messages on the server, including ones
you've not yet downloaded. Now return to "Get XXX headers at a time"
and uncheck the option completely; then compact the folder.

From now on, OE will only download headers/messages posted to the
server since you last checked (polled) for messages.

You should probably visit this page, too:
http://www.insideoe.com/files/maintain.htm#cleannews (lotsa good stuff
there).
Click to expand...

Thank you very much Mr. Bear. This is very helpful.

Regards.

J.
 

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