In article ,
Andrew Gabriel wrote:

Seems hardly any universities run news services anymore so our upstream
feeds have reached EOL and won't be being replaced so we will be effectively
cut off. Given we would have to find (pay) for a new feed and also replace
our existing machine (Sun E250 - ancient) it's not going to happen :-(

I used to run the news service in Sun for Europe on a couple of
E250's, one for all the peering connections, and the other for
the client connections. Neither of them ever ran much above a
few % CPU using INN.

Yep, when I moved the sevice from a Ultra1 to a E250 we took two primary
feeds and then fed something like 20 further sites. Over the time these
dwindled (last vanished around 5 years ago). Now our upstream is going.

Given we are having to make some drastic cuts to service there is no way
usenet is going to make the cut :-(

The E250 was overkill in terms of cpu - but it was a spare machine we had
from some project. CPU and RAM not a problem - disk io is the only bottle
neck when running expires. Oh well, it's time has come :-(


Given this, I need to find another news server I can use. I know people
on here have recommended stuff before - is news.Individual.net still a good
option?

Also news.eternal-september.org - free, but you have to register
on their website first to get a username/password.

Giving that one a go now. Seems ok. Looks like I'm meant to post from a
valid email addr though *scrapes brain trying to remember how the hell to
get trn to do that* :-)

Cheers,

Darren