SABnzbd Forums

I recently downloaded SABnzbd and I've been getting constant download speeds of between 0 and 1KB/s (so practically nothing is downloading at all).

I have tried other programs, like newsbin and SuperNZB and they are all doing the same thing.

A friend of mine has the same account from XS Usenet and is also using SABnzbd. We compared our configurations to make sure they were exactly the same, which they are. To test, we both tried downloading the same things, and he is getting decent speeds, while mine are almost non-existent.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can get this working properly? Thanks in advance for any advice.

Is your friend using the same ISP? Your ISP might be blocking/throttling newsgroup / NNTP traffic.

Can you take your computer to your friend's home, and then check the SAB download speed on your computer?

As it happens, I have two uncapped ADSL accounts - one with MWEB and the other with Afrihost. The one I was having problems with is the Afrihost account. My friend is with MWEB. I just switched to my MWEB account and now I'm getting the same speeds he is, close to what the maximum is for my account with XS Usenet.

I'm really disappointed. I didn't know that ISPs blocked newsgroup traffic. Is this necessarily the case? Afrihost does have their own newsgroup.

At this stage it's clear as day - switch to Afrihost account and the speed drops to 0, switch to MWEB and it's up to its maximum again.

Yes, a few ISPs block NNTP traffic. Vote with your money, or vote in parliament for Net Neutrality so that an ISP is not allowed to do that anymore.

Afrihost = mtnbusiness.co.za? Because that is the domain from where your first post came.

Which newsserver do you use? It seems Afrihost provides it's own newsserver: news.afrihost.co.za. Did you try that?
If that works, it could be Afrihost blocks outside NNTP traffic.

Indeed, Afrihost runs on MTN's network.

What would the motivation be for blocking NNTP traffic?

I started off using the info that XS Usenet gave me. That gave my friend around 50% of the speed he's getting now. Then, he added news.mweb.co.za and doubled his speed. I added news.afrihost.co.za and my speed was still 0.

The fact that there's no speed doesn't match up with the fact that Afrihost has its own news server. I'll email them and ask about it tomorrow. I'm not sure whether they'll be able to help though.

Bl1zz4rd wrote: What would the motivation be for blocking NNTP traffic?

Because NNTP traffic typically causes large amounts of traffic (caused by a small group of downloaders). Which causes big loads on ISP's networks, and transporting traffic will cost an ISP money.

So certain ISPs don't like large amounts of traffic (well: ... if they do not get paid additionally for it). That's why some ISPs block/throttle (or charge) NNTP and Netflix traffic. See http://www.techhive.com/article/2055502 ... ffets.html

As said: with Net Neutrality such ISP actions are illegal. So check your political parties' standpoints on this