I don't suppose for one minute anyone missed me but on June 17th PlusNet
stopped connecting me to newsgroups. Initial phone calls drew a blank as
support staff denied they were ever supported, or had no idea what a
newsgroup is! After several emails and "open tickets" I eventually connected
with a support person who understood and went looking for the problem.

Hey presto, this morning, almost a month later here I am back wasting time
with you guys:-)

Mike

Muddymike wrote:
I don't suppose for one minute anyone missed me but on June 17th PlusNet
stopped connecting me to newsgroups. Initial phone calls drew a blank as
support staff denied they were ever supported, or had no idea what a
newsgroup is! After several emails and "open tickets" I eventually
connected with a support person who understood and went looking for the
problem.

Plusnet have a news server?!?!?!?

(goes off to have a shufti...)

--
Scott

Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

On 15/07/2015 10:24, Muddymike wrote:
I don't suppose for one minute anyone missed me but on June 17th PlusNet
stopped connecting me to newsgroups. Initial phone calls drew a blank as
support staff denied they were ever supported, or had no idea what a
newsgroup is! After several emails and "open tickets" I eventually
connected with a support person who understood and went looking for the
problem.

Hey presto, this morning, almost a month later here I am back wasting
time with you guys:-)

Mike


After due consideration, the adjudicating board has accepted your excuse
for going AWOL ;-)
Welcome back, Sir.

On 15/07/2015 10:42, Huge wrote:
On 2015-07-15, Muddymike wrote:
I don't suppose for one minute anyone missed me but on June 17th PlusNet
stopped connecting me to newsgroups. Initial phone calls drew a blank as
support staff denied they were ever supported, or had no idea what a
newsgroup is! After several emails and "open tickets" I eventually connected
with a support person who understood and went looking for the problem.

Hey presto, this morning, almost a month later here I am back wasting time
with you guys:-)

A *MONTH*?!?!?!?!?! I'd find a new ISP, were I you. A&A are good.


Just don't let it happen again, or you may be expelled!

"Muddymike" wrote in message
om...
I don't suppose for one minute anyone missed me but on June 17th PlusNet stopped
connecting me to newsgroups. Initial phone calls drew a blank as support staff denied
they were ever supported, or had no idea what a newsgroup is! After several emails and
"open tickets" I eventually connected with a support person who understood and went
looking for the problem.

Hey presto, this morning, almost a month later here I am back wasting time with you
guys:-)

Mike

Plusnet buy in their NewServer capacity from Giganews.

Without knowing the actual details, for some reason Plusnet
addresseses are somethimes rejected by Giganews, after
having been successfully connected for weeks or even months.
A common symptom is to ask for a password which is then
rejected.
A way around this is to disconnect the router and reconnect
after which a new NNTP address will be assigned which should work.
Assuming the user doesn't have a fixed address.

It can also help to be already subscibed to a freebie such as
Eternal September just in case


michael adams

....

On Wed, 15 Jul 2015 14:19:38 +0100, michael adams wrote:

Plusnet buy in their NewServer capacity from Giganews.

Without knowing the actual details, for some reason Plusnet addresseses
are somethimes rejected by Giganews, after having been successfully
connected for weeks or even months.
A common symptom is to ask for a password which is then rejected.

Allegedly, GN changed their IP addresses and Plusnet had to update their
firewall.

In article ,
Muddymike wrote:
I don't suppose for one minute anyone missed me but on June 17th PlusNet
stopped connecting me to newsgroups. Initial phone calls drew a blank
as support staff denied they were ever supported, or had no idea what a
newsgroup is! After several emails and "open tickets" I eventually
connected with a support person who understood and went looking for the
problem.

Hey presto, this morning, almost a month later here I am back wasting
time with you guys:-)

To avoid any future problems, use one of the free news providers like AIOE
or Eternal September. Then it doesn't matter if your ISP stops news - or
changes provider.

--
*Re-elect nobody

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

On 15/07/2015 10:28, Scott M wrote:
Muddymike wrote:
I don't suppose for one minute anyone missed me but on June 17th
PlusNet stopped connecting me to newsgroups. Initial phone calls drew
a blank as support staff denied they were ever supported, or had no
idea what a newsgroup is! After several emails and "open tickets" I
eventually connected with a support person who understood and went
looking for the problem.

Plusnet have a news server?!?!?!?

(goes off to have a shufti...)


usenet.plus.net - port 119

I've never had a problem with it.

--
Reentrant

Reentrant wrote:
usenet.plus.net - port 119
I've never had a problem with it.

It's a known problem that from time to time some of PN's IP address
ranges aren't recognised by GigaNews. A message by Bob Pullen elsewhere
suggests they've recently added at least one range (for Waitrose
customers) so maybe others were fixed at the same time?

So how could they stop you accessing them, Did they block a port or what?
Of course they are suffering the plight of selling out to BT.
Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Muddymike" wrote in message
om...
I don't suppose for one minute anyone missed me but on June 17th PlusNet
stopped connecting me to newsgroups. Initial phone calls drew a blank as
support staff denied they were ever supported, or had no idea what a
newsgroup is! After several emails and "open tickets" I eventually
connected with a support person who understood and went looking for the
problem.

Hey presto, this morning, almost a month later here I am back wasting time
with you guys:-)

Mike

On 15/07/2015 14:59, Bob Eager wrote:
Allegedly, GN changed their IP addresses and Plusnet had to update their
firewall.

And yet I've not noticed any problems at all...

Perhaps because I use news.plus.net, rather than usenet.plus.net - or
perhaps not. They are the same host.

Andy

Andy Burns wrote:
Reentrant wrote:
usenet.plus.net - port 119
I've never had a problem with it.

It's a known problem that from time to time some of PN's IP address
ranges aren't recognised by GigaNews. A message by Bob Pullen elsewhere
suggests they've recently added at least one range (for Waitrose
customers) so maybe others were fixed at the same time?

I was going to report excitedly that PlusNet has over 10 years worth of
usenet posts archived, so I suppose that explains it. Although it did
meant, after dashing off and finding the PN server, I wasted 2 hours
fighting with Thunderbird as it attempted to deal with 1.4 million
headers from uk.diy.

--
Scott

Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

So how could they stop you accessing them, Did they block a port or what?
Of course they are suffering the plight of selling out to BT.
Brian


I have no knowledge of what or how it was blocking me. All I know is my
password was rejected every time I tried to log on.

Mike

On 2015-07-15, Muddymike wrote:
I don't suppose for one minute anyone missed me but on June 17th PlusNet
stopped connecting me to newsgroups. Initial phone calls drew a blank as
support staff denied they were ever supported, or had no idea what a
newsgroup is! After several emails and "open tickets" I eventually
connected
with a support person who understood and went looking for the problem.

Hey presto, this morning, almost a month later here I am back wasting
time
with you guys:-)

A *MONTH*?!?!?!?!?! I'd find a new ISP, were I you. A&A are good.


Its actually not quite as bad as it seems. I was visiting suppliers
factories in China for 16 days so was without access, or time, anyway. Only
3 days after I returned did I chase them up again.

Mike

On Thu, 16 Jul 2015 09:09:49 +0100, Scott M wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:
Reentrant wrote:
usenet.plus.net - port 119 I've never had a problem with it.

It's a known problem that from time to time some of PN's IP address
ranges aren't recognised by GigaNews. A message by Bob Pullen
elsewhere suggests they've recently added at least one range (for
Waitrose customers) so maybe others were fixed at the same time?

I was going to report excitedly that PlusNet has over 10 years worth of
usenet posts archived, so I suppose that explains it. Although it did
meant, after dashing off and finding the PN server, I wasted 2 hours
fighting with Thunderbird as it attempted to deal with 1.4 million
headers from uk.diy.

You can safely assume a hundred headers a day in this NG, say 700 for
the past week's worth. How far back do you need to go? :-)


--
Johnny B Good

On Thu, 16 Jul 2015 09:09:49 +0100, Scott M wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:
Reentrant wrote:
usenet.plus.net - port 119 I've never had a problem with it.

It's a known problem that from time to time some of PN's IP address
ranges aren't recognised by GigaNews. A message by Bob Pullen
elsewhere suggests they've recently added at least one range (for
Waitrose customers) so maybe others were fixed at the same time?

I was going to report excitedly that PlusNet has over 10 years worth of
usenet posts archived, so I suppose that explains it. Although it did
meant, after dashing off and finding the PN server, I wasted 2 hours
fighting with Thunderbird as it attempted to deal with 1.4 million
headers from uk.diy.

I meant to pass comment on that 1.4 million headers figure. At an
average of 100 per day that would correspond to just over 38 years.
Obviously the posting rate into this NG has dropped off considerably in
recent years. I dread to imagine what it must have peaked at.


--
Johnny B Good

Johnny B Good wrote:
I was going to report excitedly that PlusNet has over 10 years worth of
usenet posts archived, so I suppose that explains it. Although it did
meant, after dashing off and finding the PN server, I wasted 2 hours
fighting with Thunderbird as it attempted to deal with 1.4 million
headers from uk.diy.

You can safely assume a hundred headers a day in this NG, say 700 for
the past week's worth. How far back do you need to go? :-)

Thunderbird suggests to me that the number is about twice that. I have a
7-day retention policy and it currently reports 1,484 articles.

--
Mike Barnes
Cheshire, England

On 15/07/2015 21:53, Vir Campestris wrote:
On 15/07/2015 14:59, Bob Eager wrote:
Allegedly, GN changed their IP addresses and Plusnet had to update their
firewall.

And yet I've not noticed any problems at all...

We have two Usenet feeds. One based on IP authentication (Plusnet), and
the other based on username/password authentication (Madasafish and some
of the other brands we look after).

Perhaps because I use news.plus.net, rather than usenet.plus.net - or
perhaps not. They are the same host.

The Plusnet hostnames were not affected.

As (the other) Bob's alluded to, Giganews added new hosts to their
authentication platform without any forewarning. We had to reactively
update our Firewall config so Giganews servers could talk to ours again.

This took longer than it should have due to a few misunderstandings
along the way.

--
|Bob Pullen Support
|Plusnet Plc. www.plus.net
|Raising £ for cancer support - http://bit.ly/1IJwTcQ
+--------------- twitter.com/plusnet ----------------

/The Plusnet hostnames were not affected.

As (the other) Bob's alluded to, Giganews added new hosts to their
authentication platform without any forewarning. We had to reactively
update our Firewall config so Giganews servers could talk to ours again.

This took longer than it should have due to a few misunderstandings
along the way. /Q

So what was unusual about muddymike's predicament? as other plusnetters including me were not affected (ever in my case)....

Jim K

In article ,
Plusnet Support Team wrote:
On 15/07/2015 21:53, Vir Campestris wrote:
On 15/07/2015 14:59, Bob Eager wrote:
Allegedly, GN changed their IP addresses and Plusnet had to update their
firewall.

And yet I've not noticed any problems at all...

We have two Usenet feeds. One based on IP authentication (Plusnet), and
the other based on username/password authentication (Madasafish and some
of the other brands we look after).

[snip]

Impressive getting a reply from the horse's mouth. Well done. Hope others
take note.

--
*Can atheists get insurance for acts of God? *

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

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Plusnet Support Team wrote:
On 15/07/2015 21:53, Vir Campestris wrote:
On 15/07/2015 14:59, Bob Eager wrote:
Allegedly, GN changed their IP addresses and Plusnet had to update their
firewall.

And yet I've not noticed any problems at all...

We have two Usenet feeds. One based on IP authentication (Plusnet), and
the other based on username/password authentication (Madasafish and some
of the other brands we look after).

[snip]

Impressive getting a reply from the horse's mouth. Well done. Hope others
take note.

Bob Pullen regularly answers Plusnet related questions posted on
uk.telecom broadband.

And this is despite the fact that Plusnet have numerous web based
forums of their own on their website in addition to a number of
UseNet Newsgroups starting plusnet.*** on the Giganews server.
Of which most plusnet customers seem blissfully unaware.

Although on the other hand if the service is that good
then maybe there should be no need for most customers
to know about, or ever need to make use of these
facilities in the first place.

I only know about them because as a Plusnet customer, I bought an
unused Plusnet Router on eBay and discovered after a about a week,
that they were presumably still charging the seller - based on the Router ID
rather than me. As my own usage was being clocked as zero.


michael adams

....

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Plusnet Support Team wrote:
On 15/07/2015 21:53, Vir Campestris wrote:
On 15/07/2015 14:59, Bob Eager wrote:
Allegedly, GN changed their IP addresses and Plusnet had to update
their
firewall.

And yet I've not noticed any problems at all...

We have two Usenet feeds. One based on IP authentication (Plusnet), and
the other based on username/password authentication (Madasafish and some
of the other brands we look after).

[snip]

Impressive getting a reply from the horse's mouth. Well done. Hope others
take note.


I liked it.

--
Adam

On 23/07/2015 11:01, JimK wrote:

/The Plusnet hostnames were not affected.

As (the other) Bob's alluded to, Giganews added new hosts to their
authentication platform without any forewarning. We had to reactively
update our Firewall config so Giganews servers could talk to ours again.

This took longer than it should have due to a few misunderstandings
along the way. /Q

So what was unusual about muddymike's predicament? as other plusnetters including me were not affected (ever in my case)....

He is using the feed that requires username/password authentication, so
is probably a subscriber of one of our other brands we look after, e.g.
John Lewis or Madasafish.

You can tell from the presence of brightview.com in the Path headers.
The Plusnet feed (i.e. news.plus.net) is IP authenticated and has
brightview.co.uk in the Path rather than brightview.com.

--
|Bob Pullen Support
|Plusnet Plc. www.plus.net
|Raising £ for cancer support - http://bit.ly/1IJwTcQ
+--------------- twitter.com/plusnet ----------------