In article , Huge
writes

Actually, once the traffic shaping cuts in, you can't access any news server at
all. A "telnet news.individual.net 119" hangs indefinitely.

Unfortunately, my Tiscali connection is provided by work. I've been trying,
unsuccessfully, to have the traffic shaping removed for 2 years now.

Interesting. I use Tiscali and motzarella.org and have not had any
problems. Very, very occasionally (once every *mumble* weeks) the
connection to the server will appear to hang mid-session, but the same
setup (client and server) also hangs very occasionally at work, so I
don't think it's Tiscali. The connection is 24/7 with news being
fetched every 10 minutes.

P2P is a different story. I used to have no problems using it to
collect TV programmes I'd missed, but in the last 2 weeks or so I've
noticed it doesn't work in the evenings (can't find any servers to
connect to.) Try again after 8-ish in the morning and it's ok.

I'll jump when my contract's up, especially as Tiscali has just been
sold to the Evil Empire (aka Murdoch).