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Testing IPv6 Usenet at NANOG

Giganews recently hosted the latest meeting of NANOG (North American Network Operators’ Group) in Austin, TX. At Giganews, we’re always looking to stay on the leading edge of Usenet service, so we viewed NANOG as the perfect opportunity to demonstrate our ongoing efforts to provide service to IPv6 networks. During the conference, NANOG48 attendees from all over the world received free access to Giganews’ service via IPv6.

IPv6 is the next generation of the Internet Protocol (IP) and allows for an almost limitless supply of IP addresses. Unfortunately the current IPv4 address space is limited to roughly 4 billion addresses, and it is projected to be exhausted in less than two years.

Several US Internet providers (e.g. Comcast) have recently announced plans to move their customers to IPv6 backbones. In Europe, IPv6 deployment is progressing more quickly. By providing native IPv6 service, Giganews customers with IPv6 addresses may access Usenet without their traffic going through IPv6-to-IPv4 translation equipment, which can fail or become a bandwidth chokepoint. With our early adoption of the technology, we can continue providing the premium quality service that our customers depend on us for!

NANOG48 Sponsored by Giganews

NANOG48 is now over, but we’re continuing our efforts to provide our premium Usenet service to native IPv6 networks. Although the service provided to NANOG48 attendees was only a demonstration, it substantiated the core of our IPv6 upgrades. Within the next year, we anticipate providing full retail service via IPv6 to all of our customers.
As Giganews’ IPv6 upgrades near completion, we’ll be sending out announcements to customers. Keep your eyes out for these and other service improvement e-mails in 2010!

“Worst. Top 10 List. Ever.” ;-) 10 Things Started on Usenet


Usenet has long held a powerful influence over life on the Internet. Spanning nearly 3 decades, Usenet has had a lot of opportunities to inspire and foster many aspects of our online world. To give credit where credit is due, Giganews has compiled this list of the top 10 things started on Usenet.

While this list is nowhere near the complete history of Usenet’s contribution to the Internet, it is an interesting look at the origin of some very familiar technologies, cultural icons, and communities.

  1. Worst. Episode. Ever: The Simpsons Comic Book Guy
  2. Yahoo! (The name, not the website)
  3. IMDb
  4. Emoticons, Sort of 😉
  5. Scientology vs. The Internet
  6. Snopes.com
  7. PNG Image Format
  8. GNU
  9. Spam
  10. PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)

  1. Worst. Episode. Ever: The Simpsons Comic Book Guy
    In the mid 90s, alt.tv.simpsons rose to a very impressive level of popularity. Due to the popularity of the TV show, the newsgroup received frequent commentary and regular episode reviews from loyal participants. Writers, voice actors, and others directly involved with the production of the show eventually took note. alt.tv.simpsons became one of the first online forums where show runners could read and react to criticism directly from the fans.

    This situation didn’t always foster good feelings, though. When fans began to feel that the show’s creativity had declined, they expressed their opinions every week in the newsgroup. The most vocal posters began to declare each new episode as “the worst episode ever”. It was not long until The Simpsons writers responded to their overzealous fans in the February 9, 1997 episode, titled “The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show.”

    The premise of the episode was that due to declining ratings, the Itchy & Scratchy team decided to add a third character named Poochie. Dedicated, longtime fans of the show were less than impressed with the change, leading to the following exchange between Bart and the Comic Book Guy:

    COMIC BOOK GUY
    Last night's Itchy & Scratchy was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever! Rest assured that I was on the Internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world.

    BART
    Hey, I know it wasn't great, but what right do you have to complain?

    COMIC BOOK GUY
    As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe me.

    BART
    What? They're giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for free. What could they possibly owe you? I mean, if anything, you owe them.

    COMIC BOOK GUY
    (pause) Worst episode ever.

    As a side note, while this episode was the origin of the “worst episode ever” catchphrase, the Comic Book Guy character appeared in episodes before this one, but his early purpose still seems to have been a way for the writers to mock obsessive fans on Usenet. Just take a look at this portion of the episode transcript for the “Radioactive Man” episode that aired on September 24, 1995:

    "Who's going to play Radioactive Man?" Bart asks. The owner (aka Comic Book Guy) says, "I will tell you in exactly seven minutes." He shuffles his wide behind back to his computer and says, "OK, here we are... alt.nerd.obsessive. `Need know star RM pic'," he types. Several geeks around the country (the artist formerly known as Prince among them) receive his message.

    -Read the alt.tv.simpsons Episode Capsule for the episode, which includes the reaction of newsgroup regulars (http://www.snpp.com/episodes/4F12.html)
    -Read an article examining the relationship between The Simpsons’ crew and zealous Internet fans (http://tinyurl.com/6ywrcf)

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  2. Yahoo! (The name, not the website)
    As graduate students in 1994, Jerry Yang and David Filo elected to rename their search engine project from “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” to Yahoo!, which was “officially” jokingly expanded to “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”. This acronym is a fairly obvious poke at Usenet’s hierarchical structure and the Usenet Oracle, which was a popular humor-based question and answer game in newsgroups of the time.

    -Read the complete history of Yahoo! (http://www.aboutus.org/Yahoo.com)
    -Read more about the Internet Oracle (formerly the Usenet Oracle) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Oracle)

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  3. IMDb

    The year was 1989 and rec.arts.movies was one of the more popular newsgroups around. Two separate posting projects would eventually blossom into the popular Internet Movie Database, or ‘IMDb’.

    The first project was a post simply titled “Those Eyes” that, with the participation of all readers, identified actresses with beautiful eyes and categorized which movies they appeared in. As this thread grew beyond the size of a typical thread, newsgroup participants simply called it “THE LIST.” The other project was the “Movie Ratings Report,” where newsgroup participants were simply asked to rate movies on a 1-10 scale. Naturally, this list also grew far larger than any typical Usenet thread.

    Both of these lists were combined in 1990 by Col Needham. Needham also started an “Actor’s List” offshoot of the original LIST, which itself became the “Actress List.” Other regulars created a “Director’s List” and work also began on a list of deceased actors and actresses.

    By this point, the goal of the list maintainers and newsgroup participants was to simply populate the lists as much as they could. By late 1990, the lists contained nearly 10,000 movies and TV shows. On October 17, 1990, Col Needham posted numerous Unix shell scripts that could search the lists, transforming them into a true database that would become IMDb. Finally, in 1993, after further expanding the database to contain more demographic information, the database moved onto the newborn World Wide Web.

    –http://www.imdb.com
    -See an example of the original “Movie Ratings Report” from September 1989 (http://tinyurl.com/6k8yj7)
    -Read a more detailed history of IMDb at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Movie_Database#History)

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  4. Emoticons, Sort of 😉The origin of emoticons in online communications can be traced back to 1982 and the creation of the humble 🙂 and 🙁 emoticons. Staff members at Carnegie Mellon University began a joke conversation on their local BBS about the behavior of various objects in freefall. One Scott Fahlman proposed using 🙂 and 🙁 in future messages to indicate whether one was or was not joking.

    This conversation thread eventually worked its way from the local CMU BBS to ARPANET (precursor to the Internet) which naturally led to Usenet. The concept of emoticons took off in the newsgroups, leading to more complex emoticons and a mode of communication that has now become commonplace.

    -Read a reconstruction of the original, non-Usenet discussion (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/Orig-Smiley.htm)
    -Read the first Usenet discussion of emoticons (http://tinyurl.com/6p2gsg)

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  5. Scientology vs. The Internet
    The alt.religion.scientology newsgroup was created in 1991. The newsgroup was created by skeptics to question Scientology and to discuss questionable behavior of Scientologists.

    The first notice that Scientologists did not approve of the newsgroup came in 1995, when a hired lawyer attempted to remove the newsgroup by sending a rmgroup command to Usenet administrators. The basis for this request was largely rooted in claims of copyright violations due to the use of the word “Scientology” and the publication of Scientologist documents in the newsgroup. This removal request actually had the opposite effect, and the newsgroup subsequently exploded in popularity.

    The Internet community has since become largely derisive of anything related to Scientology. For example, in early 2008, in an event largely similar to what occurred on Usenet a decade ago, the Church of Scientology sought to have a leaked promotional video removed from YouTube and instead stirred up a large backlash from the “Anonymous” Internet collective.

    -Read the Wikipedia entry detailing the history of alt.religion.scientology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt.religion.scientology)
    -Read the Wikipedia entry detailing Scientology’s relationship with the Internet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_and_the_Internet)

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  6. Snopes.com

    Billed as “The Urban Legend Reference Pages,” snopes.com has a similar history to that of IMDb. David Mikkelson was a regular poster to the rec.folklore.urban newsgroup starting in the early 1990s. Under the username of “snopes,” he would frequently discuss and debunk urban legends, as well as expose gullible “newbies” to urban legends, which the newbies would take as fact.

    (As an interesting aside, this latter practice was known as “trolling for newbies” and is the root of the Internet jargon for the negative practice of trolling, although “trolling for newbies” didn’t really have a negative connotation.)

    In short time, Mikkelson met Barbara Hamel, another prolific rec.folklore.urban participant who lived nearby. The two married and eventually established snopes.com as a centralized location for them to research, confirm, and debunk myths and urban legends of all types.

    –http://www.snopes.com
    -Read the Wikipedia entry for snopes.com (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snopes)
    -Read the oldest message by “snopes” archived on Google Groups (http://tinyurl.com/69j7nt)

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  7. PNG Image Format
    Launched in 1996, the PNG format for images is prevalent on the internet today, but did you know that it was created as a free, open-source replacement of the GIF format and initially developed on Usenet?

    In January 1995, programmers met in the newsgroup comp.graphics to propose and discuss the technical specifications of the new format, including its eventual name of PNG. The agreed-upon elements were collected into RFC 2083 and in March of 1997, the PNG image format was officially established.

    -Read the original “Thoughts on a GIF-replacement file format” thread at Google Groups (http://tinyurl.com/5he243)
    -Read RFC 2083, describing version 1.0 of the PNG format (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2083.txt)
    -Read more about PNG at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics)

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  8. GNU
    GNU is an operating system created by Richard Stallman in 1984 that consists entirely of free software. GNU development tools were used to develop the Linux kernel (core operating system) in 1991. GNU is also symbolic of the creation of the GNU General Public License, which many unrelated products use for free distribution.

    Stallman’s post to net.unix-wizards on September 27, 1983 not only formally announced the development of GNU, but also gave life to the free software movement that is well established on the Internet today.

    From his announcement:

    Why I Must Write GNU

    I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement.

    So that I can continue to use computers without violating my principles, I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to get along without any software that is not free.

    -Usenet article announcing GNU (http://tinyurl.com/3dz24u)
    -Read about the GNU General Public License (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License)

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  9. Spam
    The concept of Spam as an unsolicited communication has existed almost since the most infant state of the Internet, but the actual term “Spam” to refer to such messages was first used on Usenet in 1993.

    The story is that Richard Depew, a Usenet administrator, had created a program called ARMM that would automatically browse newsgroups to find messages that needed moderation. ARMM had a bug that caused it to post 200 successive messages to the newsgroup news.admin.policy, a very visible and popular newsgroup. Joel Furr, who was something of a Usenet celebrity, referred to the automated messages as “Spam” and the term has stuck for all forms of unsolicited, repeated, and simply annoying communications.

    It should also be noted that Furr’s choice of the word SPAM comes from a 1970 Monty Python sketch in which a café only offers SPAM items on the menu and the dialogue is dominated by the word “SPAM.”

    -Read more about newsgroup Spam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsgroup_spam)
    -Read the Usenet article where Spam was first named (http://tinyurl.com/69h56z)

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  10. PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)
    Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) was developed by Philip Zimmermann in 1991 to provide cryptographic authentication and privacy for online communications. The earliest releases of PGP were found in BBS and FTP depositories which offered limited distribution. PGP’s existence was very quickly announced on Usenet, and due to the exposure to a wider audience, the software’s popularity skyrocketed worldwide.

    Because PGP offers extremely strong encryption, it gained notable usage from nonconformists and civil libertarians in oppressive nations worldwide. This activity led to an actual criminal investigation of Zimmermann in 1993 on the grounds of “munitions export without a license,” a charge which rose because PGP’s encryption method was strong enough for it to be considered munitions according to US export laws. Although these charges were eventually dropped, Zimmermann at the time exploited legal loopholes by publishing the PGP source code as a printed book instead of compiled software.

    Today, PGP encryption no longer qualifies as non-exportable munitions and is used for privacy, encryption, security, and authentication in numerous applications and on countless networks around the world.

    -Read an early Usenet article discussing PGP (http://tinyurl.com/6yp2k7)
    -“Why I Wrote PGP” by Philip Zimmermann (http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/WhyIWrotePGP.html)

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

Giganews, child porn, child sexual abuse images, usenet, newsgroups, newsgroup
Clearing the Air – Usenet Abuse– Eliminating Child Sexual Abuse Images
Learn how Giganews handles Child Sexual Abuse Images in Usenet.

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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:

  1. 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.)
  2. How many downloaders of child sexual abuse images were arrested through this investigation? (For the same reasons above, ZERO arrests.)
  3. 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.)
  4. 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.)
  5. 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™

Giganews accelerator, usenet, newsgroups, newsgroup
Why You Should be Using the Giganews Accelerator™
Learn more about the benefits of using the Giganews Accelerator.
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

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

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?

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!

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 🙂