encryption

newsgroups, usenet, ssl, encryption
Alternate NNTP Usenet SSL Ports
Alternate ports for SSL NNTP access
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.

newsgroups, usenet, SSL, encryption
SSL Can Increase Your Download Speeds
SSL improves speeds by circumventing traffic shaping
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!