Supernews

[layhfbbk018 0]

Supernews seems blocked for me from nl,german,swiss, uk and ukraine servers. Finally got through via a French server.

My bad, french server was also blocked.

[LBDude 3]

I ran into this problem a couple of days ago also.  I have requested email support from Supernews for information.  I am mainly interested to see if they have changed a policy and are actively blocking AirVPN exit nodes.  It has been less than a day since I asked, but the initial response was clueless and they asked for more pretty basic information.  I'll wait and see.

 

If you search the forum posts for usenet or Supernews there are a couple of threads.  One was interesting and not encouraging.  If you read the "Terms of Service" for Supernews you will see that they do not allow the use of any 'proxy' - - so I am not expecting a positive response.

 

I have started looking at alternative usenet providers - particularly those that offer their own VPN.  I assume that they will not automatically be against VPNs and I am asking them if they allow their service to be used from other VPNs (like AirVPN, for example).

 

Since they advertise 'unlimited' plans, I also ask if they mean 'unlimited' in the sense of 'infinite' or if the word has a more practical definition.  Not with the intention of setting hard boundaries but getting an idea of the size of the playing field they find acceptable.

[zhang888 1065]

You should try eweka.nl

[layhfbbk018 0]

I'm able to connect now, but canceled my plan anyway since I'm convinced it's going to happen again.

[LBDude 3]

I am experiencing the same result.  I can access the website via HTTP and the usenet groups over NNTP as normal.  I verified this with multiple AirVPN servers in US, Canada and Europe.

 

In dealing with service, I felt like I was in an echo chamber with each email asking for exactly the same information.  I finally yielded to their repeated request for a screenshot (attached png). 

 

I received the following reply, at which time I noticed that I could once again connect with Supernews.

 

"We're very sorry that this issue has persisted."

"When you are using SSL as you connection option your connection to our servers is already encrypted, so using a VPN with the service is pointless as you are not receiving any advantage of using SSL and a VPN at the same time. Being that you are able to connect with the VPN disconnected the issues is with your VPN specifically. As we are not affiliated with AirVPN you will need to contact their support channel for assistance accessing service while connected to their VPN service."

-------

I was going to close down AirVPN, connect to Supernews and cancel the service but I clicked on Supernews in Thunderbird and it immediately connected and offered to download headers etc.

So, instead I sent them a closing email:

"Thanks for the reply."

"Without making any changes on this computer (I did not reboot, log out,
log in, disconnect the VPN or make any changes), I can now connect to
Supernews without any issue. Mozilla Thunderbird news reader makes the
NNTP connection with Supernews immediately as it had from the time I
subscribed to the service in December 2015. I can also access the
website via HTTP. I have confirmed this from multiple AirVPN servers in
the US, Canada and Europe."

"Note that the blockage I was experiencing was total. I could not access
Supernews via HTTP or NNTP (SSL or non-SSL-- over a variety of ports)
while connected to the VPN. It is certainly true that SSL security is
fine, but there are also valid privacy reasons for conducting a variety
of internet transactions over a VPN. It is possible to modify a
firewall to transmit certain transactions outside of the VPN tunnel and
direct all others through the VPN. I really am not good enough with the
Fedora FirewallD to construct and validate those rules."

"At any rate, for whatever reason, the problem has disappeared."

"Thank you for your efforts in resolving this issue."

--------------

If this happens again, I'm prepared to jump to another provider.  I have months to go on my present subscription, so as long as it works I'll use it.

 

 

 

[zhang888 1065]

OP, and LBDude, your issues seems to be similar while it has nothing to do with any VPN provider,

so unless there are some special issues this is 99% not the fault of Air.

 

Many Usenet providers started promoting their own VPN services with specific VPN providers lately,

since this is how they can gain an extra profit for the "not so" profitable Usenet access, which over

the years had to keep the price of ~10$ while an average user downloads about ~TB a month.

 

Back to the topic, just like you would prefer traffic neutral ISPs, you should also prefer traffic neutral

Usenet providers. And Supernews, which is a daughter affiliate of Giganews, is the worst thing you

can spend you money for in terms of price/performance.

 

You can try other VPN providers that offer free VPN trials, and you will see that the results are pretty

much the same. What you really have to do thou, is to sign up for a free trial with a Usenet provider

that is fair and not shaping any traffic to it's users, and not trying to agressively push affiliate VPNs.

One of such providers is eweka.nl . They do offer a free 100Mbit trial for 7 days.

I am not affiliated with them in any way, and the URL I provide above has absolutely no affiliate codes.

This is purely one of very few Usenet providers out there that adopted to the new realitly of high b/w

links at average homes, and since they have a powerful CDN service they can still afford an average

of 1TB per month for about ~10USD. I would call them the "AirVPN of usenet", for this matter.

 

 

//Edit

I forgot to mention that one of the few, cross platform software that you will be able to

maximize your speed with is NZBget. It will allow you to maximize your providers concurrent slots.

http://nzbget.net/download/

 

You should definitely give it a try, as it has outperformed all other clients by far, in terms

of flexibility and project mission, as far as I am aware.

[LBDude 3]

Speaking for myself. 

 

It was very clear to me from the outset that Supernews was most likely the entity blocking access.  In my case I knew that the problem happened on a single machine whether it was operating under Linux or Windows 7.  Under Windows 7 the problem persisted with (1) no firewall (2) Comodo firewall or (3) Windows firewall.  It affected both HTTP and NNTP protocols.

 

The remaining option was my ISP (Verizon FIOS) which is currently being sold/acquired by Frontier.  (Difficult to contact currently)

 

I started out trying to find out if Supernews had 'changed' a policy and instituted blocking of VPNs.  My intention was to push back and make a case for whitelisting rather than blacklisting the IP addresses.  While I was dealing with emails from Supernews 'support' I found a couple of forum threads on AirVPN which pointed to  2 problems with Supernews "Terms of Service" and "Acceptable Use" policies.     It turns out that Supernews prohibits (1) " Connecting from a proxy of any kind" and (2) "Excessive download volume".  I started looking at alternative providers with the assumption that those providers that offered bundles including VPNs or other proxies in addition to the usual SSL connections would probably be VPN-friendly choices.  Also, I checked TOS and AU policies looking for key words like 'excessive volume' etc.  Then I started sending emails asking them specifically if they had problems with customers using their service while connected to a different VPN and if their 'unlimited' packages carried practical definitions related to connection time or volume.

 

Based on a suggestion in another thread, I have been checking newshosting.com and I will add eweka.nl to the list.

[BFD556 0]

I have used supernews successful with Torguard for about 3 months. Looking at switching to AirVPN for the benefits it offers and now supernews really only works sporadically. It is definitely blocking my connections (Americas and Europe) now. 

 

I DO like AirVPN. As for SuperNews, its good but there are many alternatives. 

 

Anyone using UsenetServer or similar with AirVPN and good results?

[zhang888 1065]

Personally I use eweka.nl and pureusenet.nl.

Both offer free trials so you can choose which one performs better for you.

The benefit is that they are both EU Tier1 CDNs, so they have 10Gbit/s cached RAID arrays

and almost never remove any content. I always managed to utilize my 100Mbit line with them.

[BFD556 0]

Thanks for the prompt reply. I'll try them both and see how it goes.

[LBDude 3]

So, after a couple of months of smooth performance, this blockage by Supernews has been going on for a week or so and covers both http and nntp connections.

 

I have signed up with Eweka for a month.  Very pleased so far.

 

Thanks to Zhang888 for the tip.

[HomerSimpson 3]

Personally I use eweka.nl and pureusenet.nl.

Both offer free trials so you can choose which one performs better for you.

The benefit is that they are both EU Tier1 CDNs, so they have 10Gbit/s cached RAID arrays

and almost never remove any content. I always managed to utilize my 100Mbit line with them.

 

Thank you. My connection isnt good enough to justify eweka's higher price. Since I happened to be connected to US airvpn servers I got an error message from eweka that they can not take US customers at the moment.