Alternatives to Rogers for Torrents?

[ronniefung]

What's the next best deal out there? In terms of reliability as well. I've been happy with the almost no downtime from Rogers in the past coupla years.

This whole Torrent throttling has my blood boiling though. I just canceled and have 30 days to find a new ISP.

I'm looking to switch providers, but am a little unsure about what to get.

I've looked into a few companies, but I'm not the biggest computer guy.

I'm okay with DSL as long as there is no restrictions and it has good customer support.

The last thing I want to do is switch to some little company that has NO customer support and has crazy downtimes.

I'm currently paying about $45 a month from Rogers with their Hi-Speed Extreme. I don't mind paying a little more for a quality connection with NO throttling!!!!

Any help appreciated.

I would prefer help from people that ARE currently using other providers. :)

If it makes a difference, I'm located in the Mt. Pleasant and Eglinton area.

Cheers!

[gsrce]

I get about 150+ kbps through the sympatico high speed. I'm usually between 150-300 kbps depending on the torrent.

[gilboman]

I get about 150+ kbps through the sympatico high speed. I'm usually between 150-300 kbps depending on the torrent.

but new sympatico subscribers get a rediculous 30gb limit though so doesnt do ppl much good to switch to sympatico for torrents

[chrome_dout]

To the OP - take a look at dslreports.com as they rate and review many ISP's. Also that site has threads about the workarounds for downloading bit torrents via Rogers. Also have you considered subscribing to a good NNTP provider? granted it will cost you extra (say 15/mth) but you can get anything and everything at your max speed through newsgroups.

[gsrce]

but new sympatico subscribers get a rediculous 30gb limit though so doesnt do ppl much good to switch to sympatico for torrents

Really? When did they implement this?

[ronniefung]

To the OP - take a look at dslreports.com as they rate and review many ISP's. Also that site has threads about the workarounds for downloading bit torrents via Rogers. Also have you considered subscribing to a good NNTP provider? granted it will cost you extra (say 15/mth) but you can get anything and everything at your max speed through newsgroups.

I'm interested in the NNTP stuff. I don't mind paying 15 a month or so, are there any good newsgroups for TV shows, music and movies all combined?

I did a qucik google search on them, and Ic an't find anything conclusive.

[Diamondog]

http://www.newshosting.com/

$14.95 unlimited account with 8 connections. Trust me on this speed not capped by newshosting or Rogers. Once you get turned on to usenet and everything the binary groups have to offer music, movies (of every format), software, games, tv shows, ps2 xbox there is everything you can possibly think of there...there just is simply nothing IMO that compares. It's a paid service yes but worth every penny. I probably pull down and up 300+gb a month.

[gsrce]

Torrents usually are up before newsgroup stuff though, depending on what you're downloading.

[Diamondog]

Torrents usually are up before newsgroup stuff though, depending on what you're downloading.

Not for movies, music, apps, games, ps2, xbox or just about anything else I do, torrents are lame and are only used for a trading group I am part of for limited downloads and have gotten much lamer now that Rogers is playing games.

[TenzoR]

i'm still getting 250-350KB/s ...from Rogers

[chrome_dout]

*********.info has all the groups and posts listed, and provides free .nzb files. It's an amazing site!

[ronniefung]

http://www.newshosting.com/

$14.95 unlimited account with 8 connections. Trust me on this speed not capped by newshosting or Rogers. Once you get turned on to usenet and everything the binary groups have to offer music, movies (of every format), software, games, tv shows, ps2 xbox there is everything you can possibly think of there...there just is simply nothing IMO that compares. It's a paid service yes but worth every penny. I probably pull down and up 300+gb a month.

I just signed up....where do i find accessible group listings? is there a search engine similar to torrents?

[shawn99]

Well newshosting says only single user, but can't use a proxy to share among friends to help foot the bill?

or use the tunneler, http://www.metropipe.net/wiki/index.php/Private_Newsgroup_Reading_HOWTO

[ah802]

If you're using BT to download movies, consider renting them or use something like zip.ca; Better quality and for the most part cheaper over the monthwith less effort. For your email, going back to dial-up might negate the ~$ savings, but it would send a message.

I find it hard to believe we got hooked into paying ~$50 a month with less and less service.. almost to the point of abuse.

[Diamondog]

I just signed up....where do i find accessible group listings? is there a search engine similar to torrents?

You need to install a news reader client I suggest Agent news reader, when you go through the install it will ask for your newshosting user/pass info as well as newshostngs server info which can be found here: http://www.newshosting.com/index.php?PageName=serverinformation.php

Then the software will ask if you want to download a listing of the available groups it will download 50,000+ groups from which you would search and subscribe (when I say subscribe that is how you add the group to your list of "prefered" groups it doesn't cost). Then the software will download available headers in each group, you'll want to sort by author at the top of agent or else it'll be to crazy to go through everything. The first time Agent downloads all the headers for groups it is nt uncommon for it to take hours in some binary groups to download because there is so much available in the group. After youy get all the headers for each group your interested in downloaded and sorted by author then you go through the listings to see what you want to download, delete the rest. The first time tales the longest because there is so much data in some groups to download the headers and go through but once you go through it all and download headers (in my case once a day from the groups I subscribe to) it is very quick to download and go through. A list of available groups from newshosting can be found at: http://www.newshosting.com/grouplist/grouplist.txt *NOTE the groups that start alt.binaries........are the groups with data in them such as movies games music etc...an example would be alt.binaries.dvd here you can download new/old dvd's PAL or NTSC.

[ronniefung]

thanks for the reply. Really appreciate it.

I'll give it a whirl when i ge thome tonight.

Long shot, but are there groups for for indy orineted music as well? I see you have a Hatebreed avatar.

[fatpiggy]

If you're using BT to download movies, consider renting them or use something like zip.ca; Better quality and for the most part cheaper over the monthwith less effort. For your email, going back to dial-up might negate the ~$ savings, but it would send a message.

I find it hard to believe we got hooked into paying ~$50 a month with less and less service.. almost to the point of abuse.

Good point. All I need is some internet access to the email and this site. The rest is all downloading (emule and BT). I am switching to basic plan as soon as my 3 month free with Rogers expires。

[Diamondog]

thanks for the reply. Really appreciate it.

I'll give it a whirl when i ge thome tonight.

Long shot, but are there groups for for indy orineted music as well? I see you have a Hatebreed avatar.

Anything and everything is available: alt.binaries.mp3.indie, every genre of music is available *note some groups have multiple listings examples:

alt.binaries.music.heavy-metal
alt.binaries.metal
ect.....some groups will having little to nothing in them but keep looking through the various groups until you find one that has what you want.

[singhownethu]

Newsgroups are where its at.
I'd rather pay 40 bucks for 3 months
then have to waste an entire night to download a single file

[ichpen]

but new sympatico subscribers get a rediculous 30gb limit though so doesnt do ppl much good to switch to sympatico for torrents


That's not true.

[Diamondog]

That's not true.

Even if Sympatico doesn't network shape for torrents or have download caps, torrents are like fishing with bait, newsgroups are like fishing with dynamite!

[firetrainer]

so downloading off of newsgroups doesnt count towards your Rogers quota?

[Marlek]

so downloading off of newsgroups doesnt count towards your Rogers quota?

It does, but the ISPs generally care a lot less when you are DL'ing exclusively instead of UL'ing AND DL'ing like you do with a torrent. The upstream bandwidth is expensive.

[gilboman]

Really? When did they implement this?

a while ago

[gilboman]

That's not true.

what's not true?

http://www.bell.ca/shopping/PrsShpInt_Int_Chart_Dsl.page

[Diamondog]

so downloading off of newsgroups doesnt count towards your Rogers quota?

Rogers never really came after me for quota until 6 - 8 months after they implemented then I got the letter. Since then I have bought a house and the builder has a deal with Rogers free Internet/Cable for 1 year when you purchase a home through them (Monarch). I got my account transfered to the new address when we moved in. I tried to log into my account to check my monthly quota and found that it said this information was not available at this time, I checked a few more times and when I thought it was safe the upload/download bananza began again and so far so good. I guess they are not monitoring my account because it is on a free promo for 1 year. Anyways Rogers monthly cap of 100gb is much higher then what I am hearing this Sympatico one is 30gb? It's just not enough bandwidth for me even at 100gb I push easily over 300gb up down a month...excessive sure but it's what I do....wish I could just pay for true UNLIMITED service I would certainly pay for it and quite handsomely at that.

[gilboman]

Rogers never really came after me for quota until 6 - 8 months after they implemented then I got the letter. Since then I have bought a house and the builder has a deal with Rogers free Internet/Cable for 1 year when you purchase a home through them (Monarch). I got my account transfered to the new address when we moved in. I tried to log into my account to check my monthly quota and found that it said this information was not available at this time, I checked a few more times and when I thought it was safe the upload/download bananza began again and so far so good. I guess they are not monitoring my account because it is on a free promo for 1 year. Anyways Rogers monthly cap of 100gb is much higher then what I am hearing this Sympatico one is 30gb? It's just not enough bandwidth for me even at 100gb I push easily over 300gb up down a month...excessive sure but it's what I do....wish I could just pay for true UNLIMITED service I would certainly pay for it and quite handsomely at that.

for the top two tiers of sympatcio you only get 30gb and 1.50 for each gb after that. dont even imagine the horror of how much they charge for the lower tiered price plans

[McLaren]

Check out www.teksavvy.com for DSL provider.

[ronniefung]

I just got newshosting and dled agent reader.

All i seem to find is spam? It seems really complicated...forgive me, i'm learing about this tron stuff, real slow. :)

[Diamondog]

It is a little convuluted at first but once you figure it out you'll see. There are a lot of spam groups you get that with 50,000+ groups. Here are some of my fave groups you'll find lots of goodies in these!

alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.comlete_cd
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.heavy-metal
alt.binaries.dvd
alt.binaries.dvdr
alt.binaries.dvds
alt.binaries.dvd.music
alt.binaries.cd.image.playstation2.dvdiso
alt.binaries.games.xbox
alt.binaries.cd.image
alt.binaries.tv
alt.binaries.games


Agent FAQ: http://www.forteinc.com/agent/faq.php

[mar1b0r0man]

Hi all,

I'm on Rogers Extreme and have been having the same problems for the past 2 weeks, this is right after they've increased their internet rates again. Fed up, I called up Tech Support yesterday (Feb 10/07), the guy I was talking to denied any knowledge of Rogers blocking any P2P services, but admitted that Rogers has introduced bandwidth regulation via throttling & traffic shaping. He even explain to me how if everyone was using P2P services at once it would bring down their entire network, poor Rogers.

So in a nutshell, the tech basically told me Rogers has sold and is continuing on selling internet services to consumers knowingly they do not have the proper network capacity or backbone infrastructure to fully support their advertised claims. Also, they do not expect consumers to use up their monthly bandwidth quota's, including those on "Extreme - For downloading & sharing large files, movies, music, etc." But now it seems that paying subscribers are using the allotted bandwidth, therefore big brother Rogers will just have to "regulate" bandwidth usage by degrading service and increase service fees, etc.

Well it's time to shop, bye bye Rogers internet, cable, phone and maybe cellular, due to a damn contract :( Currently looking at FCI Broadband. If anyone has any experience with this company please leave a comment, thanks :)

[Spazmogen]

I've never had trouble with torrent speeds on Rogers Express. But I take it easy and stay under 60gb. I've only crossed over than a few times, like when Vista RTM was posted on Nov. 11th. I got 3 or 4 versions and a few DVD-9 movies that night.

Torrents:
I normally get 100-380kb/s down depending on the speed of the seeds.


I got into Giganews.com and use Newsleecher for my reader. Newsleecher's supersearch feature is unbelievable. Works like any other search engine. Type in what you want, and it searches and reports back with the results.

Giganews has 100 day retention now too.

[Tereno]

Hmm. Could some kindly explain to me on how to use newgroups? Abit unclear at the moment. Thanks.

[dmdsoftware2]

What's the next best deal out there? In terms of reliability as well. I've been happy with the almost no downtime from Rogers in the past coupla years.

This whole Torrent throttling has my blood boiling though. I just canceled and have 30 days to find a new ISP.

I'm looking to switch providers, but am a little unsure about what to get.

I've looked into a few companies, but I'm not the biggest computer guy.

I'm okay with DSL as long as there is no restrictions and it has good customer support.

The last thing I want to do is switch to some little company that has NO customer support and has crazy downtimes.

I'm currently paying about $45 a month from Rogers with their Hi-Speed Extreme. I don't mind paying a little more for a quality connection with NO throttling!!!!

Any help appreciated.

I would prefer help from people that ARE currently using other providers. :)

If it makes a difference, I'm located in the Mt. Pleasant and Eglinton area.

Cheers!
They've been throttling for well over a year and your blood is now just boiling?

[ChinpokoMon]

Everything there is to know about newsgroups....

http://www.slyck.com/ng.php

[waitin4BOOST]

This is what i'm currently using for NNTP:

NZBs are great! they are much like torrents...these are 2 of the sites i use www.nzbsrus.com & www.nzbmatrix.com It beats downloading headers and whatnot, just find what you want and dl away. There are probably more free NZB sites to be found...but i haven't been searching for any others in a while.

And currently using Grabit as my client...its free and does whats required. But lately i've been having problems with YEnc...have to manually decode, too lazy to figure it out; but for the most part it should decode internally.

Does Agent open NZB files? I've used agent years and years ago, but haven't used it since....

[zoob]

Do the any of the servers check to see if the connections come from the same IP?

I'd be interested in signing up for one of those with a friend of mine. I miss the oldschool Rogers news servers... they used to max out my download speeds :D

[Diamondog]

Does Agent open NZB files? I've used agent years and years ago, but haven't used it since....

http://www.forteinc.com/news/bulletin.php?id=agent42nzb

[duckdown]

As for your original question, for the Rogers alternative, alot of my friends have switched to either CIA (www.cia.com) or Unitz (www.unitz.ca)

Both are 100% UNCAPPED and look to be very good... I hear good things about both of them.

Unitz is DSL only for the GTA though, their cablemodem reach hasnt spread into the GTA yet