Download speed is the specification providers are vaguest about. “Blazing fast”, “maximum speed”, “no limits*” — and then an asterisk somewhere, or nothing at all where a number should be.
So this page does the opposite. It states what the infrastructure is, exactly how many connections each plan allows, what the limits are where limits exist, and what we never do to your speed. In sentences you can copy.
Where the speed comes from
Two things decide how fast Usenet feels: how much capacity sits behind the service, and how far the articles have to travel to reach you. We invest in both.
The backbone runs on multiple 100 Gbit/s uplinks, and our servers sit in Europe and the United States. Two locations on two continents keeps the route between you and the articles short, wherever you are — and short routes matter more on Usenet than almost anywhere else, because a download is thousands of small requests rather than one long stream.
There is a whole page on why that is: shorter routes mean faster downloads →
Parallel connections, and why the number matters
A connection is one open channel between your newsreader and our server. Each one fetches articles in sequence: ask, receive, acknowledge, ask again. While a connection waits for the next article to arrive, it is not moving data. (Whether every one of those articles is actually there is a separate question — that is completeness.)
Running several connections at once is how that waiting gets hidden — while one waits, the others transfer. This is why the connection limit is a real performance figure and not a technicality: too few connections and your line simply cannot be filled, no matter how fast the server is.
Here is exactly what each of our plans allows:
| Plan | Parallel connections | Download speed | Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| Block accounts (all sizes) | 200 | Unlimited | What you bought, never expires |
| Unlimited | 100 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| 5Day Unlimited | 100 | Unlimited | Unlimited, 5 days |
| Basic 50 | 50 | 50 Mbit/s | Unlimited |
Scroll the table sideways to see all four columns.
For most people 20 to 50 connections already saturate a home line. The headroom above that is useful when you are far from the server, on a very fast connection, or running several downloads at once.
Where the limits are, and where there are none
Two details are worth spelling out, because they are the ones support gets asked about most often.
The connection limit is per account, not per device. The 100 connections on an Unlimited plan are yours to distribute as you like — one machine using all of them, or four devices sharing them, makes no difference on our side.
And on Unlimited and Block accounts we do not cap the speed at a number of Mbit/s — nor do we reserve the right to. That second half is the part worth having in writing: a limit that is not in the terms today cannot quietly appear in them tomorrow.
Basic 50 is the one plan with a figure attached, so it deserves a precise sentence. It runs at a constant 50 Mbit/s — a fixed line speed, not a throttle, and it is never reduced further however much you download. The distinction matters: a cap is a price you knowingly chose, a throttle is a penalty applied after the fact. Basic 50 is the first, and we do not do the second.
What we never do to your speed
These practices are common enough in this industry to be worth ruling out one by one:
- No peak-hour slowdowns. Evening speed is not traded away to make daytime figures look better.
- No prioritised customers. There is no paid fast lane — the plan you bought is the speed you get.
- No slowing of particular newsgroups or file types. Every group on our feed is served at the same speed.
What your own line can actually do
Once the provider is out of the way, the maths is simple — and it is worth knowing, because it sets the expectation properly. Time to download 10 GB on a connection that is genuinely saturated:
| Your line | 10 GB takes | Suitable plan |
|---|---|---|
| 50 Mbit/s | 27 min 18 s | Basic 50 is enough |
| 100 Mbit/s | 13 min 39 s | Unlimited |
| 250 Mbit/s | 5 min 27 s | Unlimited |
| 500 Mbit/s | 2 min 43 s | Unlimited |
| 1 Gbit/s | 1 min 21 s | Unlimited |
If your line is 50 Mbit/s or slower, an Unlimited plan cannot make it faster — Basic 50 gives you the same result for less money. Above that, the cap would be the thing holding you back.
Getting the full speed out of it
Most “slow provider” reports turn out to be one of three settings in the newsreader. Before writing to us, it is worth checking:
- Connection count. Many newsreaders default to 4 or 8. Raise it towards your plan’s limit — this is by far the most common cause of disappointing speed.
- SSL enabled, port 563. Encryption costs almost nothing on modern hardware and is on by default with us.
- Where the files land. A slow external drive or an aggressive virus scanner can bottleneck a download that arrived perfectly quickly.
Our newsreader tutorials show the right settings for the popular clients, step by step.
Check it, do not take our word
Everything above is testable from your own connection in about a minute: run the speed test →
Then pick a plan that matches what your line can actually do. If we do not deliver what this page promises, cancelling takes a few clicks.
