News Feed from Telstra

[PT_Richard]

Hi,

Tomorrow I will be trying to get a News Feed from Telstra.
We will then drop the sprint feed once I am happy it is performing well.

Regards,

Richard

[mbottrell]

Excellent news...

From memory -- this isn't a full feed however...

I'm wondering if you can keep a US based feed for groups not held by Telstra?

It would be great if Swiftel could get a full news feed! :) That would be another feather in the hat to you guys! :D

Cheers,

Matt.

[peteru]

As someone who came from Telstra BigPond ADSL just this week, I would be happy to have the same news availability at Swiftel.

I actually use news for discussion, rather than leeching pr0n and warez. The current state of the Swiftel news service is rather sad. For example, aus.cars is missing a lot of posts and those that appear expire in almost no time at all.

[mbottrell]

I agree,

I use the news server for technical groups... really ain't interested in the *.binaries groups.

A full list of all tech. groups would be great. :) Esp. the comp.* heirarchy.

Cheers,

Matt.

PS: What is the retention policy on the comp.* groups?

[PixyMisa]

Get a 1.5mbit plan with Pacific Internet and suck from them ;) They don't charge for traffic from their news server.

They might get a bit upset tho'.

[peteru]

Get a 1.5mbit plan with Pacific Internet
But they started sucking once they stopped being Zip. They went completely rotten within 6 months of being bought out by that Singaporean mob. Even in the Zip days, it took BB and Kim close to a year to get a decent news setup.

Regardless, I just signed up with Swiftel on the proviso that they provide a NNTP server - I expect it to work for at least aus.* and comp.* stuff. Non-binary news is not hard to do and I am sure that Swiftel could do a good job if reliable news service is seen as something that is worth doing.

I'd say sort out non-binary news first, then worry about binaries as / if when it suits. A Telstra feed will go a long way towards sorting out this. Non binary posts in non binary groups would ideally stay on the server for at least 3 months.

[Reiner]

Originally posted by peteru
Non binary posts in non binary groups would ideally stay on the server for at least 3 months.

That's a long time. Do you know of an Oz ISP that offers this sort of retention? Though I agree it shouldn't be a problem as text messages don't take up that much room and hard drives are big and cheap these days.

[PixyMisa]

A full text feed is less than 1GB per day, so 3 months is easy enough to do.

[klaasv]

I use the free (registration required) news server at news.individual.net for all my news group requirements. It doesn't carry any binaries, and has a reasonable retention policy.

I would like to use Swiftel's news server, simply from a speed of access point of view, but it will be a while, I think, before it is settled enough to be consistent. Using a feed from Telstra will go a long way toward this, but there are enough alternatives out there in the meantime.

[Reiner]

I've waited a few days... There's one "binary" in alt.binaries.pictures.orchids and about 10% to 15% of binaries have made it to alt.binaries.pictures.animals.

Have the groups that were to be filtered on the old feed been filtered from the Telstra feed?

[peteru]

I don't think that Swiftel have a Telstra feed yet.

The aus.* hierarchy is full of holes. A rather sad state for such a low volume (and local) bunch of groups.

[PT_Richard]

Hi,

Ill update you on this tomorrow.

Richard

[peteru]

I spun this off to another thread a few minutes ago to give it some visibility.

Will look for an update after you (and I) had a chance to rest. :)

[peteru]

Originally posted by DSL_ENG
Ill update you on this tomorrow.
I realise it is the Friday before Christmas and you probably have better things to do than reply to messages, but...

Any chance of that update? :p

Thanks.

[MadMick]

I would be very interested in this too as the news feed is the *only* thing I can fault with Swiftel.

I came across from Optus Cable and their feed was fairly good (when it worked:D ), but now I am lucky to get 5% of the posts :( .

Like many of the others, I rely on news groups for tech support and genreal chit chat, as for binaries, the only group I use is alt.binaries.pictures.weapons, and now I'm lucky to get 5 posts a day instead of the usual 80-100

[Reiner]

Originally posted by MadMick
alt.binaries.pictures.weapons What about alt.binaries.pictures.military and alt.binaries.pictures.tanks?

[wombat]

Originally posted by MadMick
I would be very interested in this too as the news feed is the *only* thing I can fault with Swiftel.

I came across from Optus Cable and their feed was fairly good (when it worked:D ), but now I am lucky to get 5% of the posts :( .

Like many of the others, I rely on news groups for tech support and genreal chit chat, as for binaries, the only group I use is alt.binaries.pictures.weapons, and now I'm lucky to get 5 posts a day instead of the usual 80-100

Good lord - the people you find on Swiftel - heya Mick, ltns from the old Optus days (and no, despite the nick, this isn't Daniel :) I just went by Andrew back on swifty

[PT_Richard]

Hi,

Telstra are taking their Merry time in getting back to me, I will call them again today.

##Made Call, waiting for them to repond##

Richard

[MadMick]

Originally posted by Reiner
What about alt.binaries.pictures.military and alt.binaries.pictures.tanks?

Haven't checked out pictures.military, but will do so, although I expect the same result.

Hehe, as for tanks, that's one thing I don't need, want is another story though :D

[MadMick]

Originally posted by wombat
Good lord - the people you find on Swiftel - heya Mick, ltns from the old Optus days (and no, despite the nick, this isn't Daniel :) I just went by Andrew back on swifty

Hiya Andrew

Hehe, if everyone from Optus put their hands up I think you might be real surprised ;) , now there is a new poll for ya :D

[MadMick]

Originally posted by DSL_ENG
Hi,

Telstra are taking their Merry time in getting back to me, I will call them again today.

##Made Call, waiting for them to repond##

Richard

Thanx Richard

Mate, please don't hold your breath waiting ay :D ;)

[Dave.B.]

The feed from aus.sf & aus.sf.star-trek seem to have stopped on 18/12 & microsoft.public on 19/12 , but still getting aus.computers & aus.ads.forsale. Why is it so? Hope the news server settles down soon. :(

[peteru]

Just thought I would kick this thread over once more.

Any news regarding the Telstra (or any other, improved) news feed?

[PT_Richard]

We now have a "WAIX" sourced nntp feed and Telstra.

Telstra is only feeding aus.* and melb.general

"WAIX" is feeding everying but the list below:

I have requested the removal of these group wildcards.

alt.binaries.vcdz
alt.binaries.vcd
alt.binaries.vcd.*
alt.binaries.cd.*
alt.binaries.image.cd.*
alt.binaries.dvd.*
alt.binaries.dvdr
alt.binaries.multimedia
alt.binaries.multimedia.*
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.*
alt.binaries.sounds.misc
alt.binaries.pl.mp3
alt.binaries.mp3
alt.binaries.tv.aus
alt.binaries.beatles
alt.binaries.misc
alt.binaries.boneless
alt.binaries.x
alt.binaries.nl
alt.binaries.movies.*
alt.binaries.mpeg.*
alt.binaries.games.*
alt.binaries.series.tv.*
alt.binaries.warez.quebec-hackers

Sprint will be dropped by the end of the week.

Regards,

Richard

[peteru]

Well, I must say that I am happy with the new state of the aus.* hierarchy. Lots of missing articles have finally arrived. Retention seems to be about 30 days, which is a good. Once things settle down, I would love the retention increased to 60 or 90 days if possible, but I am happy with 30.

I hope that you are going to end up with feeds as good as aus.* for the other groups.

Thanks for sorting it out.

I noticed that a number of people were having a whine about dropping a selection of the binary groups, but given constraints, it was the best thing to do. Many people fail to realise that Usenet was never meant for distribution of pr0n and warez, it's a discussion forum hijacked by clueless top posters :) <says /me while ducking for cover>

[mbottrell]

Excellent work!