In article ,
Huge wrote:
On 2008-11-10, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Some ISPs

Tiscali.

Yes - I'm with Pipex which is owned by them. Although if this continues
I'll move when the contract is up. Of course some ISPs have removed news
access entirely. And I'm not going down the Google route.

are blocking all newsgroup access at some times of the day to restrict
usage. Seems strange given how little data text based ones use - but
this isn't the case with binaries.

That's why they do it - because the copyright thieves have spoiled it for
everyone.

I wonder why they don't just remove binary groups from those available?

I've got 3 different news suppliers
here and they're all blocked when this happens.

That's because they reconfigure their routers to drop traffic on port
119. It doesn't matter where it's going. Irritatingly, Tiscali drop
traffic on 8119, too, which NIN also listens on.

Thanks for adding to what I'd read.

They seem not to be doing
it to all their customers at the same time either - just to confuse.

I wonder if they do it by bandwidth? Once port 119 traffic goes over
'x', they traffic shape it? It defintiely isn't by time-of-day.

It is here. But not all the time. Had a week of no access between approx
1800 - 2400 followed by back to normal then another few days of the same.
At the moment it's normal. My email and news progs do auto fetches every
20 minutes while the machine is on. I'm not a heavy user and pretty well
never download large files, etc.

Seems so few use news these days that it's not a problem for most - and
therefore those ISPs won't miss the few customers who change because of
it. Allegedly.

--
*Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.