giganews blog

Clearing the Air – Usenet Abuse– Eliminating Child Sexual Abuse Image

2008-09-29T16:05:00.000-07:00

The sexual abuse of a child is a crime against humanity which has no equal. Accordingly, the possession, distribution, or mere viewing of sexual abuse images is considered a serious crime in many jurisdictions including the United States.

Sexual Abuse Image Prevention and Education

Since its inception, Giganews has continually supported law enforcement in their efforts to investigate and apprehend offenders. Giganews has worked to educate and train law enforcement on how Usenet works and how they can identify a poster’s Usenet server. This information allows law enforcement to identify the poster and cut the problem off at its source.

Upon the receipt of properly obtained court order, Giganews will promptly act to follow the court order. Over the years, Giganews has complied with court orders and assisted the successful prosecution of numerous offenders. Let us be clear, we strongly believe that our customer data is held to what we consider some of the highest privacy standards in the industry. Privacy, however, does not equate to anonymity.

The following timeline demonstrates our ongoing commitment to working together with law enforcement across the world:

2004 – Giganews joins the Internet Watch Foundation (“IWF”) as the 50th member and financial sponsor. The IWF is an organization dedicated to working with Internet service providers, telecom and mobile service operators, law enforcement, the government, and the public to minimize the availability of sexual abuse images online. (http://www.iwf.org.uk/media/news.archive-2004.84.htm)

2005 – Giganews organizes a "Fighting Child Porn on Usenet" conference. Those in attendance included Usenet providers representing 75% of United States Usenet traffic, and law enforcement agencies including the FBI, ICE, Interpol, US Dept. of Justice, US Dept. of Homeland Security, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, International Internet Hotline Providers (“INHOPE”), National Police Agency of Japan, West Midlands Police, and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (“NCMEC”).

2005 – Giganews attends the annual IWF conference in London, held in conjunction with members of British government and law enforcement, including members of the House of Lords, House of Commons, and Scotland Yard.

2006 – Giganews, at the invitation of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canada’s National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre, meets with the Virtual Global Task Force in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

2007 – Giganews' Chief Technical Officer speaks at the INHOPE General Assembly regarding methods used to track suspects and sexual abuse images over the global Usenet network.

New York Attorney General Recent Actions

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo recently requested several Internet service providers stop providing access to 80 specific newsgroups (the NYAG repeatedly cites 88 groups, but their list contains 8 duplicates). The NYAG asserted that these groups were solely used for the dissemination of sexual abuse images.

This request was also sent to Giganews. Nearly half (38) of the listed newsgroups had already been previously made unavailable through Giganews' service due to our existing policies and ongoing cooperation with International law enforcement. The remaining 42 groups were promptly removed based upon the assurance from the NYAG that these groups were solely used for the dissemination of sexual abuse images and that it was a serious criminal matter from the NYAG’s “Organized Crime Task Force”.

The Unspoken Facts

A closer examination of the NYAG’s recent actions generates the following facts that were not reported in the NYAG’s press release nor in coverage by traditional media.

According to the NYAG's own press release, the NYAG found 11,390 instances of sexual abuse images after examining millions of Usenet articles.

The NYAG identified 80 Newsgroups that contained 11,390 sexual abuse images.

The 11,390 sexual abuse images accounted for only 0.25% of the 4.5 million articles contained in the 80 newsgroups at the time the groups were deleted.

Therefore, 99.75% of the articles in the identified newsgroups were free of sexual abuse images according to the information provided by the NYAG.

The 11,390 sexual abuse images accounted for only 0.0003% of the 3.7 billion articles available across roughly 100,000 newsgroups offered by Giganews.

Thus, 99.9997% of the 3.7 billion available Usenet articles were free of the sexual abuse images reported by the NYAG after their exhaustive search of millions of newsgroups’ articles.

NYAG’s June 10, 2008 Press Release

The NYAG's June 10, 2008, press release contains a quote from the CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, "This is a major step forward in the fight against child [sexual abuse images]. Attorney General Cuomo has developed a new and effective system that cuts online child [sexual abuse images] off at the source, and stops it from spreading across the Internet."

We have several points about this quote:

Attorney General Cuomo's "new and effective system" is described in the press releases as a listing of checksums (hash values) of the known sexual abuse images. This repeated statement is false. Computer scientists have been using checksums for decades. Andrew Cuomo did not invent checksums.

Andrew Cuomo shut down 80 newsgroups his office identified as current posting places of sexual abuse images. Because of the large number of newsgroups in Usenet, we believe that shutting down 80 known newsgroups will not solve the problem of child sexual abuse and the resulting sexual abuse images. Further, the NYAG has not indicated that it will do anything to alert us to future materials so that we can delete them.

In all our years of working with law enforcement to combat child sexual abuse images on Usenet the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has provided no support whatsoever. We have never received a single takedown notice from either the NCMEC or any U.S. law enforcement agency. Further, in our own discussions with top people at NCMEC, we know that they, like us, are prevented by law from viewing any potentially illegal materials for the purpose of validating an image as illegal.

In contrast to NCMEC, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF - http://www.iwf.org.uk/) in the UK has worked closely with us to remove tens of thousands of sexual abuse images over the years. Under English law, the IWF has a safe harbor and is able to view and evaluate sexual abuse images for illegal activity. The law in the United States does not provide such a safe harbor for NCMEC and other organizations and suggests a change is needed at the legislative level.

The press release further states “[w]e are attacking this problem by working with Internet Service Providers to ensure they do not play host to this immoral business.”

Andrew Cuomo claims he worked with service providers in this investigation. However, as DSL Reports eloquently states, it was very much a sting operation (see http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Fight-Child-Porn-ByDoing-Nothing-Differently-96080). The NYAG certainly did not approach Giganews and ask us to work with them. Instead, the NYAG’s Organized Crimes Task Force began an undercover investigation and attacked us as if we were the criminals producing, consuming, promoting, and selling sexual abuse images.

In order to provide the online services that make the Internet what it is today, service providers are in a tough position as they face assassination at the hands of overly zealous Attorneys General, such as Andrew Cuomo. We find it offensive that service providers are being labeled as the source of sexual abuse images.

Questions We Consider

After the NYAG’s recent actions, here are some serious questions we ask ourselves:

How many posters of child sexual abuse images to Usenet were arrested through this investigation? (The press releases are silent on this issue, and given the level of positive press due to any arrests, we are left to assume ZERO arrests.)

How many downloaders of child sexual abuse images were arrested through this investigation? (For the same reasons above, ZERO arrests.)

How many ongoing pedophile sting operations, in the deleted newsgroups, by OTHER law enforcement bodies across the world were disrupted by the NYAG's actions? (We may never know. In our experience, law enforcement prefer the group(s) remain open so they can surveil the group(s) and build a prosecutable case that leads to warrants and the eventual arrest and successful prosecution of the posters of the sexual abuse images. In a previous instance where similar newsgroups were removed we know that an investigation was disrupted.)

If the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is prohibited by law from viewing sexual abuse images, then how can they report to ISPs the URLs of sexual abuse images, and what is their plan to join in the fight on Usenet? (Giganews would gladly embrace any assistance from NCMEC.)

If not NCMEC, then what U.S. organization will serve this role?

Note on Terminology

Please note that we prefer the terminology "child sexual abuse images" instead of "child pornography". We do this out of respect for the Internet Watch Foundation and their view on the terminology (see http://www.iwf.org.uk/public/page.103.htm). We are glad to have them on our side in actually helping to remove child sexual abuse images from Usenet.

Conclusion

It is our hope that the NYAG truly has the safety of children in mind and not political gain as they move forward with their efforts. We hope that they are part of a solution that envisions service providers working in tandem with law enforcement to combat this heinous crime. We are disheartened that they choose to attack service providers instead of truly working with them. The recent news of service providers being threatened with legal action should they fail to sign an undisclosed agreement with the NYAG is problematic. Our government should not behave in this manner.

We hope you have found this blog post interesting and educational. There is clearly more at work here than was initially reported through official channels and traditional media. We are glad to provide an insider's view on these issues.

Giganews will continue to enforce its abuse policies related to sexual abuse images so that the overwhelming majority of members posting legal contributions will be able to continue to enjoy and participate in the global open and public Usenet community.

Why You Should be Using the Giganews Accelerator™

2008-07-14T05:27:00.000-07:00

If you use the Giganews® Usenet service, or if you keep up with Usenet news, you've probably heard about the Giganews Accelerator. The Giganews Accelerator is a Windows® operating system based software application which was custom built by our very own engineering team to improve the security and speed of the Usenet experience.

This post was written to give you an inside look at the security and compression advantages that set the Giganews Accelerator apart.

What does the Giganews Accelerator Do?

• Compresses headers for up to 10 times faster header downloads
• Enables secure login, whether or not you have SSL service
• Real-time reporting on your in/out traffic
• Allows rate-limiting even if your news reader doesn't
• Allows SSL connections even if your news reader doesn't

Compression Technology

The Giganews Accelerator sets itself apart from other Usenet compression technologies because the Accelerator's compression is done at the protocol level rather than the network level. By compressing at the protocol level, we can selectively compress the parts of the data stream where compression makes sense, and leave alone parts that do not benefit from compression.

Most binary article data is already compressed when it's uploaded, so compressing it for download doesn't actually save users any network traffic. Similarly, very small content, such as response messages, also get very little benefit out of compression because of their already small size.

Compression also requires CPU and time. CPU time is required on the server end to compress the data and on the client end, to decompress the data.

By selectively compressing only the compressible content, a user's CPU can be used for downloading instead of needless decompression work.

Other Usenet compression technologies essentially compress the entire network stream, using software like Stunnel, which compresses all data in and out. With that method, every bit of traffic requires more CPU to decompress, CPU that could be better spent on getting more traffic or decoding already downloaded data.

Differences Between Stunnel and the Giganews Accelerator

Secure Logins

With the Giganews Accelerator, all of your logins are secured via SSL, even if you do not have 256-bit SSL encryption added to your Giganews account. With the Accelerator, we do authentication under SSL and then the Accelerator renegotiates an unencrypted connection for continued use. Your login and password are private, even if you don't pay for the full privacy that an SSL account offers.

Of course, if you do have an SSL account, the Accelerator will fully utilize it, even if your news reader software doesn't support SSL. On the server end, our SSL is built directly into our custom written server software. We write all of our software in-house with an eye towards maximizing per-stream performance. By hooking SSL capabilities directly into our server software without proxy servers or processes, we can read and write SSL data as efficiently as possible!

Real-Time Reporting

With the Accelerator's real-time reporting function, you can see how many actual connections you have open, what commands are being issued, and what state they are in.

Rate-Limiting

The Giganews Accelerator lets you rate-limit your streams as one entire group. This lets you optimize your bandwidth usage if you share an Internet connection or if you just need to do some other things while downloading data. With the Accelerator's rate-limiting feature, you can ratchet your connection speed down to control the flow of bandwidth for other purposes, even if your news reader software doesn't support rate-limits.

In Conclusion

We encourage you to check out all of these features for yourself. The Giganews Accelerator is a free program and we really think that it improves the Giganews Usenet experience. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. You can also check out our Usenet University™ tutorial page about the Giganews Accelerator. There is a cool little video, featuring screen shots and instructions about configuring the Accelerator and your news reader, all done with a soothing British voice over.

Special Offer for Sprint and Verizon Usenet Subscribers

2008-06-19T08:12:00.000-07:00

Similar to the special Giganews is running for Time Warner Usenet subscribers, Giganews is offering a special introductory rate for Verizon and Sprint customers.

Verizon customers are going to be losing access to the alt.* newsgroup hierarchy on June 24th 2008, and Sprint customers are expected to lose access to the same hierarchy sometime thereafter.

This special is only available to members who have a valid Sprint or Verizon email address and have not been a Giganews member since June 18th, 2008.

Current Sprint and Verizon subscribers can visit Giganews' Sprint and Verizon Usenet special web page for more information.

Special Offer for Time Warner Usenet Subscribers

2008-06-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

Giganews is currently running a limited time offer for Time Warner Usenet subscribers who will be loosing Usenet access on June 23, 2008. This special is only available to members who have a valid Time Warner / Road Runner email address and have not been a Giganews member since June 16th, 2008.

Current Time Warner / Road Runner subscribers can visit Giganews' Time Warner Usenet special web page for more information.

What's Your Name?

2008-06-10T07:29:00.000-07:00

As you may have seen, Giganews is now supporting custom usernames for members with Giganews® personal Usenet accounts.

Previously, Giganews members were assigned a random username when signing up for service. The username would start with "gn" and would be followed by a series of numbers (example: gn1234).

Members were then emailed their username, which they would use to configure a news client or log on to the Giganews member control panel.

The problem that so many of us had was that we couldn't always remember our Giganews username. This can be especially frustrating when setting up a new computer or logging on to the control panel. You would have to dig up the email with your Giganews username or look at the configuration settings of your news client.

This frustration is what helped us decide to push custom usernames to the front of our development cycle. Giganews' engineering group worked very hard to make this feature available and we hope if helps make your Giganews experience that much better.

If you have any comments or suggestions on this feature or any other feature please feel free to post a comment.

Giganews Party Photos!

2008-05-13T07:01:00.001-07:00

Giganews would like to thank all our loyal members, webmasters, and well wishers who joined us on 10 May 2008 for Giganews' 10th year anniversary party in Paris!

It was great getting to meet so many people from the Usenet world, and it was inspiring to watch everyone connect and get to know each other.

Our staff and friends had a wonderful time and are very thankful to everyone who attended.

Without the support of members and webmasters, Usenet would be a much less interesting place.

We hope you enjoy the pictures. We'll have the videos up soon :)

April Fool's Day on Usenet

2008-04-01T15:24:00.000-07:00

Soviet Union Prank

Wired magazine has an interesting article featuring their picks for the 10 best April Fool's gags in the digital era.

One that might be very familiar to truly old-school Usenet veterans is the launch of "kremvax", the Soviet Union's very own Usenet server, in 1984.

Of course, it was all a joke, but at the height of the Cold War, users across the globe bought right into the deception — a sure sign of a great April Fool's Day prank.

You can read a transcription of the original article as well as some reactions once the ruse was up at http://www.godfatherof.nl/kremvax.html.

Ironically, a few years later, a legitimate Usenet server actually did come online in Moscow, and many readers were skeptical that posts coming from the server weren't actually more pranks. Eventually, the server's administrators took the joke to heart and had their gateway renamed to kremvax.

Birth of SPAM

April 1 also marks another momentous event for Usenet. Unfortunately, this one has little to do with humor and much to do with the universal annoyance we call spam, and why we even call it 'spam' in the first place.

On March 31, 1993, a program called ARMM (Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation), which was designed to streamline and automate the process of sending cancel messages for abusive posts, experienced a catastrophic bug. ARMM began posting follow-ups to its own messages, causing a recursive 'feedback loop' and flooding the news.admin.policy newsgroup with useless posts.

Joel Furr, then of considerable Usenet fame, described the flood of messages as 'spam' and the name simply stuck. Furr's usage of the term came from a popular Monty Python sketch in which Spam was the only item on a restaurant's menu, but no customers wanted. Accounts are varied, but most agree that Furr was the first to use the term to describe Usenet messages, and his usage of the term eventually migrated to unsolicited email.

Check out the Wikipedia article about spam for more history of the term.

Giganews Paris Party Contest

2008-03-13T11:23:00.000-07:00

We ran across this picture in the newsgroup giganews.contest and thought we'd share it on our blog. This is an entry in a contest for tickets to our 10th year anniversary party in Paris.

If you'd like to attend our 10th year anniversary party, don't forget to submit your entry ASAP as the contest ends soon.

You can find instructions on how to enter the contest on this page.

**************************
About the Event:

Paris, France
10 May 2008
~20:30 - 02:00

Giganews is proud to host our customers, website publishers, technology press, Usenet members, and Giganews' founders, staff and friends for our 10th year anniversary party.

The event will be held at an amazing club in central Paris. We have hired a DJ and will be providing plenty of food and alcohol.

We are looking forward to you joining us for this exciting chance to meet, exchange ideas, and network with some of the brightest stars of the Usenet world.

For members attending the party from outside Paris, we have secured a discounted hotel rate at a nice hotel near the venue.

Selected winners will be placed on a guest list which will be checked at the door. The only thing the winner needs to bring to the party is government issues photo identification (example: passport).

We are excited about getting to meet so many interesting people from the technology and Usenet worlds in one place. For many years we have known these people only through the other side of an email, newsgroup posting,or forum thread. Having the opportunity to interact in person is something we are eagerly looking forward to.
**************************

Submit your entry now!

Usenet University™ High Definition Videos

2008-02-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

By now I'm sure you've come across Giganews' new Usenet newsgroups tutorial content available via our Usenet University™ tutorial series.

You may also have seen that Giganews produced an entire series of Usenet tutorial videos along with our extensive Usenet tutorial web content.

These videos are available in low resolution on our web page; however, Giganews is now making high resolution videos available via the newsgroup giganews.usenet.university.

Visit giganews.usenet.university to access high definition screen captures and instructions showing you all the techniques you'll need to become a Usenet pro. If you're not sure how to access giganews.usenet.university, visit our web content linked above for instructions on configuring your news client.

Enjoy!

Usenet and the History of the Poke

2008-01-08T10:52:00.000-08:00

You log into your Facebook® account and find that one of your friends from junior high has poked you…and the battle begins, poking back and forth until one of you gets horribly annoyed and a truce is called. This is an experience that millions of users have every day. The poke is ubiquitous in Facebook culture. But where, you must ask yourself, was the first poke war fought?

According to Andrew Girdwood at e-consultancy.com, the poke is a comfortable middle aged concept born in 1963 with the BASIC computing language. This is a far cry from the rambunctious poke that Facebook addicts recognize today.

The poke of 1963 turned into a "social currency for the gamer geeks" who used it to cheat games and shared their knowledge with friends and fellow users over Usenet. Girdwood's article goes on to compare the poke to Linux's finger command, which allowed users to get personal information such as phone numbers and real names from their friends on the network. Nowadays, the poke has devolved into something more playful and, says Girdwood, something not "quite so simple and elegant" as its ancestors.

So the next time you get poked, nudged, or winked at, think of the 45 year old father of the poke hanging out in Usenet newsgroups, facilitating gamers in accumulating unlimited lives, hordes of ammo, and more, and let the battle wage on.

Giganews Flame Wars

2008-01-02T07:14:00.000-08:00

Giganews recently announced the release of our Usenet-themed arcade game, Flame Wars.

In the Flame Wars™ game, you'll take on the role of a Giganews^® recovery pilot, given the task of recovering Usenet articles that have been waylaid by trolls. Power-ups at your disposal include kill-file missiles for taking out those nasty trolls and a Giganews Accelerator to speed up your download beam.

So far, our in-house high score is 198,000. Post your own high score as a comment on this blog post. Comments are moderated so please be patient if your comment doesn't appear right away.

Good luck!

Usenet History Puts Town on Map

2007-12-17T07:50:00.000-08:00

Nashau, New Hampshire is the state's second largest city and the one time home of Digital Equipment Corp.'s Unix Engineering Group. DEC's move to New Hampshire in the early 1980s, according to a recent article in the Nashau Telegraph, put the city on the map. The article also states another, related, claim to fame for the Nashau area: one of the first Usenet newsgroup articles to appear in Deja News's (now run by Google) Usenet archive.

The Deja News/Google Usenet archive began as the personal archival project of Henry Spencer after he took over the Duke University Usenet feed in 1981. You can read more about Henry Spencer, including an interview, at our Usenet History Project site. By the time Spencer handed his archives over to Deja News he had accumulated more than two million articles dating from 1981, including Nashau's DEC Unix announcement.

The Deja News/Google archive and all of its millions of archived articles are important historical resources and certainly document an exciting time in computing history. The early 1981 DEC post may be one of the earliest archived Usenet articles, but Usenet had been humming along for two years before Spencer started his archive and the Unix post was captured for the future's eyes. Get details about the earliest days of Usenet by visiting Giganews's Usenet History Project at http://www.giganews.com/usenet-history/index.html.

Help Giganews Review our Services and Features

2007-09-10T11:59:00.000-07:00

Giganews is celebrating our 10th anniversary next year and this year has been one of the most exciting in our history. We've made lots of advances and have worked very hard to provide improved and updated service for all our customers.

In an effort to keep improving and to make our 10th year a memorable one, we're asking Giganews customers to do a review of our services so that we can better understand what you all are thinking.

In an effort to get a thorough Giganews review, we're asking that our blog readers leave comments reviewing a variety of aspects of our service and customer care. Please, feel free to give an honest review of your Giganews experience. Do remember that the comments on this blog are moderated, so try to avoid inappropriate comments which may not make it through moderation.

Giganews is asking you to review:

- Retention
- Completion
- Giganews Accelerator
- 256-Bit SSL Encrypted Usenet service
- Customer service
- Control panel
- Website
- Etc.

If you can think of anything else we should include in our Giganews review, feel free to comment on that, as well.

Thanks for all of your help!

New to Usenet Newsgroups?

2007-08-22T13:31:00.000-07:00

So you know that Giganews has 160+ days of binary article retention and 1500+ days of text retention (as of the date of this post). You know that we have 99% completion across all of our 107K+ newsgroups. Great, sign me up! Now what?

Usenet is a vast community, and when paired with a high performance provider like Giganews, the options a user has are nearly endless. Variety is great. But it can also be a little overwhelming.

Users who are new to the Usenet community can find several helpful Usenet tutorials on the Internet, which will guide you through the process of setting up your newsreader, navigating newsgroups, and contributing your own posts to newsgroups of interest.

If you need a basic overview of Usenet terminology, check out Giganews' glossary where you'll find definitions for terms such as headers, streams, completion, retention, and much more.

Giganews customers who need help with any aspect of their service, accessing Usenet, posting to newsgroups, downloading articles, etc. can contact our 24/7/365 tech support staff, who will be able to guide you through these steps.

If you’re a Giganews customer who is unfamiliar with how to use our service or if you’re considering signing up, but need some more information make sure to use our contact form to reach out to one of our friendly support reps!

What Giganews Doesn't Do

2007-07-17T11:40:00.000-07:00

You may be familiar with all the things Giganews does, like increasing our retention, launching encrypted Usenet access, and developing the Giganews Accelerator, but do you know about all the things that Giganews doesn't do?

Maintenance Windows

A complex server cluster like Giganews' Usenet system requires maintenance all the time. We have to replace hard drives, swap out servers, update operating systems, and a whole host of other tasks.

Even though from time to time we need to take down certain parts of our cluster, we never actually have to take our service off line. This means Giganews' service is always available and isn't subject to maintenance windows similar to what is experienced through other Usenet servers. We are also able to take down elements of the network without negatively affecting the download speeds of our customers.

Weekend Rush

One of the more common problems people report with Usenet servers are slow download speeds related to increased traffic. This is most often experienced during the period of increased Usenet usage over the weekend, called the "weekend rush". When news servers have very little capacity, customers experience slow download speeds when usage increases.

Giganews maintains extremely high levels of capacity so that weekend rushes or increased usage driven by service improvements (i.e. 200 days binary retention) don't affect the speeds at which our customers can download.

Upgrade Pains

Giganews has completed many upgrades to our storage and server clusters over the years. These upgrades include adding and replacing storage, adding servers, and moving to new data center locations. These upgrades are generally seamless for our customers and very rarely even noticed.

For most of Giganews' customers the only sign that an upgrade has taken place is all the extra retention!

Many Usenet systems, in trying to keep pace with Giganews' break neck retention upgrades, experience problems almost immediately after an upgrade. These problems include lost articles, downtime, and roll backs (undoing the upgrade).

Giganews is a bit spoiled because we have a top-notch team of engineers and programmers who have developed a custom, in-house Usenet server application. This custom Usenet server application was developed 100% in house and utilizes proprietary code (it's not an open source or third party Usenet application). Our server software is designed to let us upgrade both code and hardware without interrupting service to our customers.

"Funny" Retention

Many Usenet servers will advertise retention levels which don't exactly match their actual retention. They may carry long retention in certain groups or even forgo carrying some groups all together in an attempt to reduce the size of the news feed.

These techniques allow certain Usenet servers to advertise "up to X days retention". While this may be technically correct (even if the advertised retention is only available in one group) the reality of the situation is that these claims aren't exactly accurate.

Because of Giganews' robust Usenet system and our vast storage capabilities, we don't have to hand pick newsgroups in which to offer long retention. We also carry the full suite of newsgroups, so we're not reducing the number of newsgroups we carry in an attempt to make it seem as if we have more retention than we really do.

Giganews is able to stand by our service levels without having to use "funny" retention statistics to make our service look better than it really is.

Announcing: Nothing

We're always excited to announce improvements to our service, but writing announcements about how everything is okay isn't exactly exciting news. We don't talk a lot about how our upgrades, maintenance, and retention management all run smoothly, but we feel this is an important part of the value Giganews provides to our customers.

The next time you notice Giganews increasing retention or adding features to our service, remember that there is a lot of complex work going on behind the scenes to make sure we're delivering the level of service you expect without having to interrupt your access or slow down our service.

Giganews' 200 Days Binary Retention: A Look Back

2007-07-17T08:07:00.000-07:00

As you've probably seen plastered across every Usenet related newsgroup and forum, Giganews recently announced a storage upgrade which will increase Giganews' retention in binary newsgroups to 200 days by the end of the summer. This is in addition to Giganews currently holding text articles for more than 1400 days.

This got us thinking about Giganews' retention growth over time. Giganews has always been a leader in Usenet and one of the primary ways we offer value to our customers is through our retention. We took a look back and documented some of our retention upgrades throughout the years....

Binary Newsgroup Retention

August 2001 - 14 days
October 2002 - 15 days
December 2003 - 30 days
August 2005 - 50 days
December 2005 - 70 days
September 2006 - 90 days
February 2007 - 100 days
April 2007 - 120 days
July 2007 - 200 days

That's a 1,328% increase in retention since 2001!

As you can see, Giganews has been very busy over the years making sure we're offering the best Usenet experience possible. If you haven't already signed up for Giganews' service try out our free trial account to see for yourself why Giganews is the leader in Usenet.

Giganews "For Dummies"

2007-04-19T15:05:00.000-07:00

Giganews would like to send out a special thank you to Woody Leonhard the author of "Windows Vista Timesaving Techniques For Dummies" for mentioning Giganews in his book!

In the chapter "Technique 20: Downloading from Newsgroups" Woody states...

"I, Personally, use Giganews. It's fast. They claim 99%+ completion. Binaries stick around for 90 days or more."

(Obviously this was written before Giganews' last retention upgrades to 100 and then to 120 days.)

The chapter is one of the most comprehensive "how to" instructions on Usenet we've ever read, and is an excellent read for anyone looking to learn how to use Usenet (especially good for first time users!).

If you're running on Vista, purchase a copy of "Windows Vista Timesaving Techniques For Dummies" and check out the mention of Giganews on page 216.

Thanks Woody!

1 Billion Usenet Articles

2007-04-12T13:19:00.000-07:00

As we were writing our recent announcement regarding our upgrade to 120 days retention, I was surprised to discover that our news servers were offering nearly 1 billion newsgroup articles in over 100,000 newsgroups.

This is a significant achievement for Usenet, which was originally designed to handle only a few dozen articles per day.

In Usenet's beginning there was a steady march of Usenet server software development centered on the evolving challenges of a growing community. These evolutions of server software were primarily spearheaded by graduate students working in their spare time to solve problems with matters such as naming conventions, performance, and portability.

Since the early days of Usenet, a lot of things have changed. Internet access in the developed world is commonplace, personal computers are widespread and readily available, and Usenet has grown to over 100,000 newsgroups.

Now that Usenet is a global network with countless participants, the landscape has changed. No longer will the collaborative efforts of graduate students working in their spare time solve the challenges of operating a Usenet network processing nearly a billion newsgroup articles. These challenges require significant investment, time, and experience.

Luckily for Giganews, we have a loyal customer base which allows us to focus our efforts on reinvesting in our network and technology. This investment has been used to develop a scalable, patent-pending news server software platform designed around plug and play storage upgrades.

It is this technology that allows Giganews to perform massive retention upgrades with no service interruptions. Seamless upgrades are one of the more understated things that we do at Giganews, and are something our company and our customers tend to take for granted.

Service improvements like our 120 day retention upgrade represent huge engineering challenges, but thanks to tremendous efforts by our programmers and engineers, Giganews is able to deliver these advancements with little to no impact on our service.

Now that Giganews has taken Usenet to the next level and is making Usenet more accessible than ever before, I wanted to take a second to thank our engineering staff for developing systems and technologies which allow Giganews to improve service for our customers with virtually no downtime. If you enjoy Giganews' service, post a comment on this blog post and let our engineers know how much you appreciate them!

Giganews in Cambodia

2007-04-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

Below is a picture of Jerry from Giganews' design department with his Giganews t shirt on at the Angkor Wat temple in Siem Riep, Cambodia. Jerry snapped this photograph on his trip to Bien Hoa, Vietnam to visit family. Thanks Jerry for the cool pic!

Accurately Measuring Usenet Retention

2007-02-01T15:16:00.000-08:00

As you may have seen, Giganews recently announced a storage upgrade which will raise our binary retention to 100 days over the next two weeks. This got me thinking about how retention is measured and reported by various Usenet servers.

Articles on a news server are commonly stored "first in / last out". What this means is that every time a new article is posted to a Usenet system the oldest article is deleted. The oldest available article on a news server is generally what defines a news server's retention.

Some Usenet systems will also apply this "first in / last out" rule based on hierarchy.

For example, Giganews does not expire any text articles so our text retention is 1300+ days. Our binary retention (based on available storage) is 100 days. This means that it takes 100 days for a newsgroup article to drop off of our servers in the binary hierarchies.

When you're discussing a news server's retention make sure you understand exactly which hierarchy you're referencing. If you see people refer to a news server's retention based on text hierarchies then chances are they're embellishing to make the news server seem better. In reality their retention in the more challenging binary hierarchies is probably much lower.

In addition to people using text retention to embellish the quality of a news server, you'll also see some Usenet systems carry long retention rates in just a handful of newsgroups. If we use our simple definition of retention— "the oldest available article on a news server"— then this would be an accurate description of that news server's retention. Of course most people aren't going to want long retention on just a handful of newsgroups, so you could consider this misleading. Many people sign up for Giganews after using other Usenet servers which advertise long retention rates but provide those retention rates in just a couple of newsgroups.

The final thing to look out for when trying to measure retention is "invalid date headers". In some newsgroups the headers of certain articles will contain the wrong date. In the beginning of this post, I said that most news servers apply a "first in / last out" rule to newsgroups and that the oldest article on a news server defines its retention. What I didn't mention is that the "first in / last out rule" is based on article numbers (number assigned to an article based on when it is posted) and not the date displayed in the headers. This means that if an article contains a date in the header older than the retention of the news server it still may appear in the newsgroup because it hasn't been purged based on its article number.

The best measure of a news server's retention is to look at the oldest article date in *many* popular binary newsgroups. This will generally give you the best idea of the news server's retention. If you notice a few groups with longer than normal retention, the news server is either hand picking certain newsgroups to misrepresent their overall retention levels or there is an article with an invalid date header.

Alternate NNTP Usenet SSL Ports

2007-01-10T07:53:00.000-08:00

As you may have already seen, Giganews recently announced support for 256 bit SSL encrypted Usenet access on port 443. The reason we decided to offer support for port 443 is that some customers were experiencing slow download speeds on port 563 due to port-based speed limiting on networks between their computer and Giganews.

One of the quickest ways to get around speed issues is to try switching ports. Many customers downloading on non-encrypted accounts have already found this out by switching their Usenet downloads from port 119 to port 80. This trick oftentimes quickly improves throughput rates when the source of the slowdown is port based-bandwidth limiting (networks limiting speeds on port 119).

There are two advantages to downloading Giganews' 256 bit SSL encrypted Usenet access over port 443. First, it will help you avoid port based speed limiting on port 563. Secondly, you may also avoid service-based speed limiting as your NNTP traffic is completely encrypted and running over a web-based port (port 443).

The goal of Giganews' support for port 443 is to offer our customers another path to access our encrypted Usenet service and to assist customers dealing with port based speed limits.

If you have experienced speed issues while downloading on port 563 and notice a speed improvement while downloading on port 443, please feel free to leave us a comment.

Usenet on the Go

2006-11-28T14:22:00.000-08:00

At Giganews, we love to try all sorts of gadgets and applications to make our day a little easier. Which is why when we learned about an application that allows you to access Usenet away from your desktop/laptop using any computer and a USB thumb-drive, we were itching to try it.

How does it work?

For starters, you need to download a program called MojoPac and have access to a USB thumb-drive (my drive was a twenty dollar 1GB Memorex USB thumb-drive). Note: MojoPac will ONLY run off of flash-based removable storage devices. Also, MojoPac only works on 32-bit Windows XP based OS's, sorry Mac.

After downloading MojoPac you need to run the install and point it to your thumb-drive. MojoPac will create a profile setting for you similar to creating a new user profile in Windows XP. All of your personal settings, shortcuts and … installed programs are accessed via your MojoPac "virtual desktop" stored on the thumb-drive. Awesome!

Usenet Testing
To test Usenet access, I installed NewsBin Pro and Newsleecher from my MojoPac desktop portal on my thumb-drive, and after configuring the servers, subscribing to my favorite newsgroups and some last minute tweaking, I was browsing Usenet Newsgroups without any noticeable drop in speed or performance. Pretty cool! Better yet, all of my subscribed groups, server settings, etc, are retained every time I start my news client within MojoPac. Security isn't a problem using Giganews' SSL feature and the stealthy ability of MojoPac to secure your files apart from the host computer. After unplugging my drive, no trace of my activity was left on the host computer. That's because everything resides within my MojoPac profile stored on my thumb-drive. Simple and Powerful!

With MojoPac, access Usenet Newsgroups anywhere using any Windows XP host computer and flash-based portable USB thumb-drive, now that's cool.

If you have any suggestions or tips on unique ways of accessing Usenet, comment below. We’d love to hear from you.

SSL Can Increase Your Download Speeds

2006-11-03T07:35:00.000-08:00

Giganews recently announced the deployment of Encrypted Usenet Access. This service enables Giganews customers to transfer all authentication, header, and article data over an SSL encrypted connection.

The obvious benefits of this service are increased security, anonymity, and privacy; however, there seems to be one more...

Securing your connection with SSL typically slows down your download speeds. The reason for this is that it takes a little bit of extra time and CPU power to encrypt and decrypt the data on each end. This extra latency in turn decreases your throughput rate; however, many of Giganews' customers are actually reporting faster download speeds.

How can this be?

SSL encryption helps beat ISP traffic shaping!

Through Giganews' newsgroups and support lists we have seen that many ISPs have implemented traffic shaping measures over the last year to curb usage on their networks.

This is typically done at the protocol or port level. For example, if your ISP wanted to curb your newsgroup usage, they could say that any traffic being transferred over the NNTP protocol on port 119 cannot exceed 500 kilobits per second per customer.

In the past the best work around for this problem was switching to port 80 (typically used for HTTP), but if your ISP is filtering on the protocol level (all NNTP traffic for example) switching to port 80 would not do you any good. Your ISP might be looking for NNTP commands and limit your connection when it sees them.

This is where SSL comes in.

Because SSL is encrypting the authentication, header, article, and protocol data passed between your computer and Giganews any protocol-based filtering measures will be ineffective. The speed difference can be very dramatic. Many Giganews customers have already commented that downloading over SSL has made a huge improvement in their Usenet performance.

If you've recently experienced slow download speeds with any NNTP based downloading (Giganews or other) which you suspect is being caused by ISP traffic shaping, try out our new encrypted Usenet service to see if you can get around it.

If you're a new customer, you can try out our 3 day free trial. If you're already an existing Giganews customer, log on to your control panel and select "Manage Service" for special offers just for you.

We're glad so many of our customers are seeing this additional benefit to our SSL service, and we're looking forward to offering even more advanced tools to improve your Giganews experience. If you have any other tips for avoiding troublesome traffic shaping, leave us a comment!

Get the inside scoop. Read Usenet.

2006-10-17T15:25:00.000-07:00

On episode 28 of The Science Channel's "Beyond Tomorrow" there is a segment discussing wireless security. The expert for the segment is Adam Laurie, the founder of a company called The Bunker. The episode featured a datacenter built by Adam in an old missile silo in the United Kingdom.

Adam was speaking with the host of the show regarding the original purchase of the silo. He said "They wanted to sell it (missile silo) but at the same time they wanted to keep it secret so you had to actually know it was for sale". He went on to say that he had heard about the sale of the silo after reading discussions in "Newsgroups".

Obviously, Usenet is a great source of inside information on a variety of topics. Classifieds, real estate, dating and employment newsgroups are just a few of the groups people use to gather information for use in their personal and professional lives. Adam was able to use newsgroups to get inside information on the sale of a unique facility in a way he might not have been able to through traditional sources.

For years Usenet has been a source of information you can't readily get in other mediums. On June 5th, 1991, Kelly Goen posted the first release of PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) on Usenet on behalf of PGP's developer, Philip Zimmermann. As you may know, PGP was a huge breakthrough in digital security and was available via the Usenet community before any other widely used medium.

Whether people are using newsgroups to share information on the availability of unique facilities or to find a new job, there are countless ways to participate in the Usenet community to improve your personal or professional life.

What are some of the ways you've been able to use information from text newsgroups to purchase something unique, get a job, or otherwise get information you might not have been able to get through more traditional sources?

Newsgroups, Grupos de noticias, Nieuwsgroepen, Groupes de discussion

2006-10-12T09:04:00.000-07:00

We were reviewing some of the comments on our last blog post Newsgroups vs. Usenet and we were reminded of a question we've been asking ourselves for the last 3 months or so….

"What do people who speak languages other than English use to reference Usenet related terms?"

Listed below is a breakdown of several popular Usenet related terms and the terms provided by our translation company. Are these accurate? Do you just use the English version? Feel free to comment with your thoughts….

Newsgroup
French – groupe de discussion
German – newsgroup
Dutch – nieuwsgroep
Spanish – grupo de noticias

Newsgroups
French – groupes de discussion
German – newsgroups
Dutch – nieuwsgroepen
Spanish – grupos de noticias

News Server
French – serveur de nouvelles
German – nachrichten server
Dutch – nieuwsserver
Spanish – servidor de noticias