But Giganews has not only added other services, they have also constantly improved the retention, performance and quality of their core service. The company just a few days ago reached 1200 days of retention for all binary newsgroups. This basically means that Giganews customers have access to information and files that date back almost three and a half year. That’s a big milestone, especially since all those information and files are accessible with the same performance and completion rate (that is 100%).

I honestly cannot say if the 1200 days of retention are more than any other Usenet provider offers, or if the upload and download speeds are faster. It would be very difficulty to prove, considering that you would need accounts with all comparable services on the Internet.

What I do know is that I’m a happy customer. When I download, I max my 50 Mbit connection every time, and I have the feeling that I would also max faster connections.

The most interesting account package is the Diamond package in my opinion. The reason for this is not because of the unlimited Usenet downloads or SSL connections, as other packages offer that as well. The core reason is the free VPN that you get with the package. VyprVPN has servers in several countries that you can connect to, including the United States, United Kingdom and France. If you are not sure what you can do with it, check out this article: Use VyprVPN To Access US-Only Websites or check out the core service review here. As a webmaster, the service is indispensable, for instance to check how your site is ranking in search engines.

The price is still higher than at comparable Usenet providers. If you do not need a VPN or another of the free services you may want to look at the Platinum account instead which is available for $10 less.

Are you making use of the Usenet? If so, what’s the provider and software that you are using?

The Dutch Usenet provider XSUsenet is currently offering free lifetime accounts to access the Usenet. Usenet in this regard includes access to binary groups which usually are not offered for free Usenet users.

You get free life time access, a solid 600 day retention, no IP retention, no personal details on file. All you need to do to sign up is to enter information into the registration form on the provider homepage.

Here you need to enter a valid email address and a country (only Netherlands, Germany and Belgium are selectable). Once done you get the login and server details send to the email address that you have entered in the form.

You can then use the information to connect to the Usenet. The speed is capped at 1Mbit per second at two connection tops. Users who need more speed or connections can upgrade their account to premium access starting at $6.99 for a 100 Mbit connection per month.

Free Usenet clients that you can use are the web based SABnzbd or Grabit. Please note that Usenet or newsgroups are not only about downloading binary files. You find many discussion groups there, Mozilla is for instance using the Usenet for some of their development discussions.

It is likely that the company will eventually close down the creation of new free accounts. I’d suggest you grab a free account as soon as possible.

I have tested the service and it worked just fine. I received the confirmation email with the Usenet server information in my email. Setup was a breeze and connection speed was as advertised.

Users who are just starting with the Usenet, or want to try it without giving away personal information can use the service to do just that. It is not anonymous though, considering that the service still sees the IP that you signed up with and that you connect with.

You can check out the service’s homepage here. The sign up form is at the right side. (via)

But what’s data retention exactly? Those of you who have never used the Usenet may have some troubles figuring that out. To simplify things think of the Usenet as a huge network of servers where both text contents and binary contents are uploaded to. You may have heard about Google Groups; That’s a copy of the text content part of the Usenet, at least part of that. You find groups where every imaginable topic is discussed, from the latest recipes to computer programming and manufacturer support. It is like a huge forum with separate categories for every topic.

The binary part of the Usenet is where files are posted with messages, and where other users can reply and download. All Usenet users can post files to the Usenet, which then become available for all other users, provided that their Usenet provider monitors that group for posts, and that the user has an account that allows posting to the Usenet.

That’s almost like a public ftp server where anyone can upload stuff to. Oh, and all users can download the files as well, and read the messages of the uploaders and other users.

The binary part of the Usenet is responsible for the majority of traffic and storage space requirements. Terabytes of data get uploaded to the Usenet each day, which means that providers need lots of storage to store those files for their customers and users. That’s for example nine Petabyte of storage for Giganews customers.

If you know the guys at Giganews, you know that they will not stop there. Plans are to increase storage and retention further.

I have been a Giganews customer for a long time, and never have looked back after my initial signup. The thing that’s probably even more impressive than the 1000 day retention, is that I never had a problem with the service. It was always top notch, top speed with no connection issues whatsoever. Giganews is a premium Usenet provider, which means that they are definitely not the cheapest, but their quality and service is unparalleled if you ask me.

Congratulations Giganews Usenet. Oh, the winners of the 1000 days retention giveaway have been announced as well.

If you want to know what files you can download, try an indexer like binsearch.

Giganews have been constantly working on increasing their service’s retention. Retention? Terabytes of data get uploaded to the Usenet every day, and retention refers to the time that data remains on the provider’s servers and thus accessible for customers of the Usenet provider. A higher retention guarantees that you can download files and messages that have been posted months and even years ago. The 1000-day retention mark for instance gets you access to nearly the last three years of uploads. Compare that to my very first provider who deleted data after a few days.

Giganews will break the 1000-days retention barrier on May 2. To celebrate that event, they are holding a giveaway. All existing Giganews customers are automatically entered in the draw. But the giveaway is not restricted to Giganews customers. The giveaway page lists various options, both for customers and non-customers, to enter the drawing. Prices include a Drobo FS, iPad 2, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

So how can you win? Everyone can enter their name and email address in the form for one entry to the giveaway. Existing Giganews customers can send a message for 50 entries, post about the giveaway on Twitter or Facebook, or use the Usenet client Mimo for additional entries. Non-diamond account holders can upgrade to Diamond to double their entries (they get one per month of membership otherwise).

March is also the last option to lock in the $34.99 Diamond account membership (first month for $17.49 with a 14-day trial period). The price increases by $5 from April on. Still a good deal if you need or want Usenet access and access to a virtual private network.

600 days is a high number, almost two years of data that the folks at Giganews keep on their servers, Even more important than that number is the availability of the data. Some providers with that high retentions host many incomplete files as a downside. Giganews on the other hand owns the hardware and technique making it an effective and reliable solution bringing 100% uptime, full completion and no speed limits to the user.

Giganews Diamond account owners (that’s the highest account available) recently got a nice bonus added to their accounts in the form of a VPN account at VyprVPN which runs servers in the US and UK with no additional costs attached.

Why am I writing about Giganews and not other providers? Because I have been with Giganews for years and never looked back from that point on. If there is one paid service that I recommend on the Internet then it is this one. Enough said.

Users who would like to read up on an alternative can look at Joe’s article here on Ghacks to do so.

Giganews are currently running a 50% off promotion for new Diamond account owners. If you signup you only pay half the price for the first month.

Binary groups allow users to post files with their posts while textual groups do not. The main difference between forums and the Usenet is the decentralized system of the Usenet. There is no administrator or central server in the Usenet, everything is handled by independent servers that exchange data with each other.

Usenet access is provided by so called Usenet providers. Back in the days a lot of Internet Service Providers offered Usenet access but today there are only a few that do. Most stopped offering Usenet access due to the costs involved to operate or lease the infrastructure.

Public Usenet servers exist but they tend to come and go and are not as reliable as they need to be to be a good alternative.

The only other choice are Usenet Service Providers like Giganews. Giganews is respected in the Usenet community for its quality service. They might not be the cheapest provider around but they make more than up for it by providing their users with the best quality possible.

Users who are evaluating Usenet providers need to consider several factors beyond the monthly charges that they have to pay for the access. The most important factors are:

• Traffic Limits: How many Gigabytes can be downloaded per month?
• Connection Limits: How many simultaneous connections are allowed?
• Encryption: Does the Usenet Provider offer encryption?
• Data Retention: For how long are the Usenet articles stored on the servers?
• Speed Limits: What’s the average and maximum speed that users get?
• Completion: Are the files that are uploaded complete?
• Censorship: Are the newsgroups uncensored?

Giganews, as a top provider, is offering some of the best – if not the best – values.

• Traffic Limits: Up to unlimited traffic
• Connection Limits: Up to 50 simultaneous connections
• Encryption: 256 AES encryption offered
• Data Retention: 498 days of binary articles are stored by Giganews and almost 3000 days of textual articles
• Speed Limits: 50 Mbit+ (this is the limit of our test connection to the Internet, it may very well be even faster than that). Giganews operates servers in the United States, Asia and Europe to provide users with faster access times to the servers.
• Completion: One of the best completion rates in the industry. Completion rate is greater than 99% (rest can be usually handled with so called parity files)
• Censorship: Giganews provides access to over 109,000 uncensored newsgroups.

What you need:

The requirements that are needed to access the Usenet are one of the main reasons that it has not reached mainstream yet:

• Usenet Access: Access to a Usenet server is needed obviously. We recommend Giganews but there are other providers out there as well.
• Usenet Client: Several mail and chat programs offer access to the textual groups but the binary groups require a client that is able to handle those. One of those clients is Newsbin Pro which we have reviewed in last Christmas’ Giveaway. It is a commercial software but there are free alternatives like Alt.Binz available as well

Usenet Preview:

If you do not know what you get then you’d probably do not want to pay for access to the Usenet. There are several options on how to get a preview. Option one is to make use of the free trial option that Giganews offers.

Another option is to use a Usenet search engine like Binsearch to search for files that are of interest.

Personal Experience:

I have been accessing the Usenet for more than ten years and was switching Usenet providers constantly back in the beginning because they did not offer what they advertised. That is, until I signed up for Giganews for the first time which I have been now for several years.

I never – and I really mean never – had connection, retention or speed problems other than the occasional ten minute period when your Internet Provider drops your Internet connection and you get a new IP.

The release of the Giganews Accelerator made my life a lot easier as it was now possible to download the compressed headers which bumped the speed to 4-10 times the value that uncompressed headers where delivered.

I know one thing and that is that I will stick with Giganews for as long as they continue to provide this excellent service.

Christmas Giveaway

We have a very special offer today. Giganews was nice enough to provide us with three free one-year accounts.

1 Diamond account
1 Silver account
1 Bronze account

Please leave a comment below to be included in the draw. Let us know about your Usenet experience.

Raju is giving away Disk Rescue 2009 licenses, make sure to check out his giveaway as well.

The main reason is quality and experience. Usenet providers who offer bargain accounts might run into problems eventually that might lead to situations with to many users and to little resources so that the aforementioned connection and download problems appear again.

Giganews is the quality Usenet provider and I’m more than happy to pay for that quality. What I like is that you can cap your line day and night without problems no matter if it is a 16 Mbit connection or a 50 Mbit connection (if I would have access to 100 Mbit I would love to test their servers then as well). They provide a tool called Giganews Accelerator that uses compression to download newsgroup headers 6-10 times as fast. Everyone who ever downloaded more than a million pages from a group knows how long this can take without compression.

Giganews has now reached the milestone of 400 days of data retention. This means that they keep the data that gets uploaded to the Usenet for 400 days on their servers. This must be an unbelievable amount of data as upload traffic per day exceeds several Terabytes (Giganews mentioned it exceeds 5 Terabytes per day in February 2009) these days. 400 days of retention means that Giganews users can go back and search in those 400 days for data that they would like to download.

You guys know that I never advertise services on Ghacks unless I personally use and like them. Giganews is one of the few that I can recommend to anyone. They constantly improve their service and never let me down in the past.

Here is a short list of what you need to get started working with the Usenet:

• You need a Usenet Provider that is providing the access to the Usenet. I recommend Giganews but there are others out there as well.
• You need a software program to access the Usenet. I personally use the commercial Newsbin Pro client but there are free ones out there like Alt.Binz or Grabit.
• You need some good Usenet search engines. You can use these search engines to search for files that have been posted to the Usenet. Users who are interested in getting a Usenet account might want to use these search engines first to see what the Usenet has to offer.

And that’s it. There are lots of guides and tutorials out there that help Usenet newcomers. If you have any questions let me know and I try to answer them in the comments here.

Currently about 5 Terabyte of data gets uploaded by users world wide to the Usenet, a figure that is surely about to increase as the popularity of Usenet services rise. Giganews is currently running so called Usenet trials which offer the first three months of Usenet access of some of their Usenet plans for half the usual price. Users can for example get an unmetered unlimited download plan for $12.49 or the premium Diamond plan with additional SSL encryption and 20 consecutive connections for $14.99.

What do you get for that? If you have never heard about Usenet or Newsgroups before you might be wary about joining a Usenet provider. That’s understandable. A good start is to take a look at our Usenet Search article which contains links to several Usenet Search Engines. They can be used just like any other search engine. Just enter a name in the search form and look at the results. Downloads are only possible with a Usenet account and a software client for Usenet. There are several choices, we outlined one in our Usenet Client article.

Giganews are running trial offers right now that reduce the price of their two most popular Usenet accounts by 50% for the first three months. That means that you can get their most popular account (the one that I’m using btw.) for $14.99 instead of $29.99. The account will get you unlimited bandwidth, 256-bit SSL encryption and 20 connections to their services which usually means full speed downloads even for fast Internet connections. I cap at 1.8 Megabytes per second with my 16 Mbit connection and 10 connections to Giganews.

Users who want to test the Usenet account do need a Usenet client as well to be able to connect to the Usenet servers. There are a few free clients available like Alt.Binz. That’s all that is needed to get everyone started with Usenet. Some additional tips include using the Giganews Accelerator to speed up header retrieval from Giganews servers and to take a look at the Usenet Search article to access some of the best search engines available to find the files that you are looking for.

The Giganews accounts come all with a 14-day free trial period for extra safety. You will not be charged if you quit in that period and followed the rules outlined on the Giganews pages.

Here is the list of steps again:

• Visit the Giganews website and signup for an account.
• Download Alt.Binz or another Usenet client.
• Download Giganews Accelerator to speed up header retrieval
• Use Usenet search engines to find the files that you are looking for.

I think that the offer is a fair one especially for new users who never accessed Usenet in their life. Keep in mind that the monthly price changes to the usual after the first three months though.

Giganews also announced that they are currently running a special for AT&T customers. AT&T, much like Warner and Sprint / Verizon decided to discontinue the alt.binaries support for their customers and Giganews tries to offer them a new save home on the Internet.

AT&T customers will get the same deal that Warner / Verizon / Sprint customers got. They get up to 50% off of the first month of their subscription to Giganews. They can also signup for a free 3 day 10 Gigabyte download limit trial first.

If you want a tip I would definitely pick a Usenet plan that supports encryption to protect your privacy while being connected to the Usenet. Giganews users can also make use of the Giganews Accelerator which speeds up header downloads tremendously.

Usenet Providers provide access to the Usenet which offers discussion based groups as well as groups that offer file downloads. What the Music Industry does not like at all are those groups where music files are posted. While this is understandable it is not the task of the Usenet Provider to filter content on the Usenet which would a nearly impossible task anyway.

This would be like asking Internet Providers to ban certain websites from being accessible by their clients. Ups, did not they do that already ? The real question is another one. Who is actually responsible if copyrighted files are getting uploaded ? Should not they press charges against the users who are uploading those files instead ?

This however is not that possible because of the way the Usenet works unless you would get access to the Usenet Provider’s data. Even then it is not possible to know which user uploaded a specific file unless he did use this specific Usenet provider to do so.

What is your opinion in the matter ? Should they be able to sue Usenet Providers ? Internet Service Providers ? The Internet ?

This is one of the many features that have been introduced by Giganews such as 256-bit SSL encryption which makes it impossible for your Internet Provider to spy on the traffic that is send to and received from Giganews.

Another feature is the additional software Giganews Accelerator which compresses the headers that are received from Giganews increasing the header download speed by a factor of almost six. Giganews offers a three day trial with a 1 Gigabyte limit for everyone who is interested in trying out the service. If the service is canceled in that time you will not be charged at all, if you do not cancel you simply use the normal plan that you have selected during signup.

A Usenet provider like Giganews gives you access to the Usenet which is basically a discussion platform where users can also post binaries. The binaries make the Usenet so attractive to everyone who feels that P2P is not safe anymore. Giganews offers SSL encryption which means that your Internet Service Provider does not know what you are exchanging with Giganews. If you want to get an impression of what the Usenet generally has to offer you might want to take a look at Newzbin and Binsearch. Those two sites are Usenet indexing sites that have records on many files that get posted day in day out on the Usenet.

Retention on the other hand is not everything. What good is a retention of 120 days if the files are all incomplete and useless to you ? Thankfully Giganews has a very high standard and offers more than 99% file completion which is a great figure for the Usenet. The speed is excellent as well, I can fully use my 16 Mbit connection and get 1.8 Megabytes per second using the encrypted connection to Giganews.

You do need a so called news reader software to be able to connect to the servers and download files to your computer. I’m using the commercial software Newsbin which is excellent. Grabit is a free alternative.

I have written a longer post in the past that gives you additional information, take a look why Giganews is the ultimate P2P Alternative.

You probably do not know about the Usenet and wonder why you would have to pay for accessing it. I would like to direct you to the following two websites that could give you an impression of the kind of files (and discussion) that you find on the Usenet. Try Binsearch to discover the treasures of the Usenet. It is of course illegal to download copyrighted files like the latest movies, games and tv series – but no one would know if you would do which is different from P2P networks where you seed a lot and everyone is able to find out your IP.

You do need a program that connects to the usenet and supports SSL to be able to use this new feature. I use Newsbin which is a commercial software with many features but there are others that are completely free. Newsleecher is one for instance.