Serious Downloading with Binary News Reaper 2
So what is "Serious Downloading"?
You've
mastered getting around in usenet, found some large binary groups you
like, managed to download a few large binary files, and added a paid
news server (NSP) to pull down fills. Now you are faced with the
large bills that occur because your NSP charges by the gigabyte.
You've got long download times because down loading is so slow despite
your broad band connection. And after you finally get all the parts,
you
still have the great fun of attempting to assemble articles taken from
different servers by different versions of your news reader., or
different news readers.
To understand the benefits of a newsreader like BNR2, we need to understand what is allowed by most ISP's and NSP's.
Download Speed: Even with broad band, all the ISP's and NSP's I've ever used cap the speed of EACH connection to the internet. In the case of NNTP, this means that while your download speed from the ISP may be 764Kps, you could see, as I do a maximum download speed of 100Kps per connection downloading from usenet.
Connections: Above we mentioned connections - News readers often are set up to have open only one connection at a time, or at best a couple of connections. But your ISP, and certainly your NSP, may allow as many as 8 connections. If you connection to the internet can stand it, you might be able to fill up your internet pipe - the 764kps above - by using your ISP and NSP connections to use all available connections. This could mean a 7.54 fold increase in your download speed!
The ideal news reader would have the following abilities:
1. Allow you to connect to, download from, and assemble article headers from 2 or more sources. It would then be able to recognize when a "Post" was complete, and allow you to download it painlessly into a completed file.
2, Allow you max. out the allowable connections to each of your sources to provide the fastest download possible.
3. It should be able to see which articles are unique to a single server, and focus that servers downloads to those.
4. Be free, as in NO CHARGE, NO ADS, NO NADA. Why? 'Cause I'm cheap, and a little because it's more in the sprit of usenet.
And if you need to guess which news down loader I think meets all of these, and delights me for it ease of use, then please start over.
To understand the benefits of a newsreader like BNR2, we need to understand what is allowed by most ISP's and NSP's.
Download Speed: Even with broad band, all the ISP's and NSP's I've ever used cap the speed of EACH connection to the internet. In the case of NNTP, this means that while your download speed from the ISP may be 764Kps, you could see, as I do a maximum download speed of 100Kps per connection downloading from usenet.
Connections: Above we mentioned connections - News readers often are set up to have open only one connection at a time, or at best a couple of connections. But your ISP, and certainly your NSP, may allow as many as 8 connections. If you connection to the internet can stand it, you might be able to fill up your internet pipe - the 764kps above - by using your ISP and NSP connections to use all available connections. This could mean a 7.54 fold increase in your download speed!
The ideal news reader would have the following abilities:
1. Allow you to connect to, download from, and assemble article headers from 2 or more sources. It would then be able to recognize when a "Post" was complete, and allow you to download it painlessly into a completed file.
2, Allow you max. out the allowable connections to each of your sources to provide the fastest download possible.
3. It should be able to see which articles are unique to a single server, and focus that servers downloads to those.
4. Be free, as in NO CHARGE, NO ADS, NO NADA. Why? 'Cause I'm cheap, and a little because it's more in the sprit of usenet.
And if you need to guess which news down loader I think meets all of these, and delights me for it ease of use, then please start over.
Setting up Binary News Reaper BNR2
As
always in these "how to"s, you'll need to download BNR2 from the author's home page, or from the mirror site - but remember,
updates may be on the author's page for months before we update, so try
his first. For first time windows users, download the exe file on the
downloads page. For Linux several options are available. For updates,
most simply unzip / tgz and then overwrite the old exe file.
Next, start it up. When first opened BNR2 may pop up with the "New Server" window, but if it doesn't, simply select it from the SERVER / NEW SERVER menu choice on the tool bar.
Once
the New server window opens, you'll see a screen like this:
The
Configuration Tab should be straight forward to you.
1. Use Setting from parent level - for this basic guide, lease this one checked.
2. Name- the name you Want to call this server.
3. Host - the connection dns of the server - if you don't remember the Host name (names like news-server@myISP.net) look it up in the set up windows of your current news readers.
4. Port - 119 is the standard.
5. Authentication - your account use name and password for this server.
6. Encrypt password in BNR2.ini - unless you want to type your password each time check mark this one.
The next Tab, and the only other one we will consider at this time, is the Connections Tab
1. Use Setting from parent level - for this basic guide, lease this one checked.
2. Name- the name you Want to call this server.
3. Host - the connection dns of the server - if you don't remember the Host name (names like news-server@myISP.net) look it up in the set up windows of your current news readers.
4. Port - 119 is the standard.
5. Authentication - your account use name and password for this server.
6. Encrypt password in BNR2.ini - unless you want to type your password each time check mark this one.
The next Tab, and the only other one we will consider at this time, is the Connections Tab
If you
left the "Use Setting from
parent level" checked the only other item you'll need to set is Max.
number of simultaneous connections - if you don't know the number of
connections allowed, start with 3, and then as you use BNR2 you can
keep adjusting this number up and down until you start seeing the error
message "max. number of connections exceeded". We'll show you this later.
Next step is to set up your remaining servers by repeating the steps in this section until all your currently available servers are listed.
Next step is to set up your remaining servers by repeating the steps in this section until all your currently available servers are listed.
Loading the available news Groups
Next
we'll need to download the updated news group list from each of the
servers. Simply
1. switch to the servers tab:
Dark Green is working, Light green
when complete. While the News group listing is going on you'll need to
leave BNR2 alone. If you're connection is slow, or your service
provider keeps lots of groups, this could take a while.
Let's take a look a the full news group list:
1. switch to the servers tab:
2. Highlight
each server in turn,
3. Click the Connect button.
BNR2 should begin to automatically download the news group list. If you haven't already, repeat the process with your other servers. You can watch the progress of this be the lower bar, which would show one connection per server, and it's download point:
3. Click the Connect button.
BNR2 should begin to automatically download the news group list. If you haven't already, repeat the process with your other servers. You can watch the progress of this be the lower bar, which would show one connection per server, and it's download point:
Let's take a look a the full news group list:
Having
selected the News group tab, we can see a complete list of newsgroups
on
the servers we've set up if the "All" tab is down, and only
those we have already Subscribed to if we click on "Subscribed". On the right
side you can see the number of articles available on each of the
servers. Those groups with no number of articles in the colum most
likely do not carry the group. To select groups to Subscribe to, simply
highlight the group you want, and click the "Subscribe" button on the
left. Once you remove the highlighter, the group will show in
black, and more importantly, will now show in the "Groups" Tab.
Click on the "Groups" tab:
Referring to the image above, simply
double click on the news group you wish, and you'll open up
in a new Tab with a article listing, in this case showing on the Tab
line as ABG:
And you can see the missing parts
showing in red to the lower right. If you think these will file in
later, select No. But if you don't think they will, and you can use the
parts with a recovery tool like Par2, then select Yes.
If you want to watch the program in action, click on the "Queue" tab:
Two points - it's the weekend as I do
this, and RR is slow, slow, slow. The other server is a very good, very
inexpensive but "metered speed" server, Octanews. Maximum speed I'm
paying for is 6kBs per connection, so I'm having a good day with them.
That's really all there is to it. An average of 218 kB per second, two servers in use, six connections.
Tricks and Tweaks
01.
How many connections? With BNR2 you can check the number of
connections allowed simply while in use. From the Server tab highlight
the server you want to check, Right click and select Properties,
then increase the maximum connections on the "Connections" tab setting
by one until you start getting a yellow error bar at the bottom
of BNR2:
Click on the "Groups" tab:
Simply
Highlight the group you want, then click on the "Refresh" button and
watch BNR2 go to work.
Following
the numbering above, let's look at the meanings of the window:
1. & 2. These are my personal selections for the files to be arranged in what order. In this case files were first arranged by file name, then by Subject.
3. Parts and Servers. In the red is showing that only 36 of 40 parts are available, and shows both my RR and Octa servers with the same files. In the lower green you see that 40 of 40 are there, and the "X" in both server columns tells us that the parts are complete on both servers. You can also have a condition with a green 40 / 40 but a 28 and 35 in the servers - showing neither server complete, but all the articles available and complete when using both servers.
4. Note the Red "text" and the Green "binary". Both are complete on both servers, and can be downloaded.
5. The "Black" on the File column shows that this file was found by BNR2 in the download directory, and the Blue line indicates that BNR2 downloaded it.
To download a group of files, simply
A. click on the first file,
B. scroll down to the last file you want
C. Holding down the shift key, click on the last file you want
D. Right click and select "Mark for downloading"
If there are any incomplete files you'll see a message like this:
1. & 2. These are my personal selections for the files to be arranged in what order. In this case files were first arranged by file name, then by Subject.
3. Parts and Servers. In the red is showing that only 36 of 40 parts are available, and shows both my RR and Octa servers with the same files. In the lower green you see that 40 of 40 are there, and the "X" in both server columns tells us that the parts are complete on both servers. You can also have a condition with a green 40 / 40 but a 28 and 35 in the servers - showing neither server complete, but all the articles available and complete when using both servers.
4. Note the Red "text" and the Green "binary". Both are complete on both servers, and can be downloaded.
5. The "Black" on the File column shows that this file was found by BNR2 in the download directory, and the Blue line indicates that BNR2 downloaded it.
To download a group of files, simply
A. click on the first file,
B. scroll down to the last file you want
C. Holding down the shift key, click on the last file you want
D. Right click and select "Mark for downloading"
If there are any incomplete files you'll see a message like this:
If you want to watch the program in action, click on the "Queue" tab:
As BNR2
works, articles are assembled as they are downloaded. Looking into your
download directory you would see:
showing
the completed files, and the incomplete file parts (the
tcs-poa1.re.01-36 and tcs-poa1.re.38-40)
which can be used by recovery tools like Quick Par.
And if you want to keep an eye on your speed, you can move to the Sever tab where you can see the speed of each of it's connections:
And if you want to keep an eye on your speed, you can move to the Sever tab where you can see the speed of each of it's connections:
That's really all there is to it. An average of 218 kB per second, two servers in use, six connections.
Tricks and Tweaks
There
are lot's of features we did not cover above. After all, this is
intended to get you started, not have every thing there is to know.
Don't over look the very good manuals that come with BNR2.
You
might also notice that a new tab marked "Errors" has appeared, and a
message reading:
showing
you that the server is refusing your attempt at another connection.
Simply reset the max.. connections setting to the next lower number and
you'll be in good shape.
02. The download Directory. For me it was the first thing to change in BNR2's settings. You can make the download directory different for each group, or make a "gobal" change for all groups.
02. The download Directory. For me it was the first thing to change in BNR2's settings. You can make the download directory different for each group, or make a "gobal" change for all groups.
A. Go to the Groups tag
B. Highlight "Newsgroups"
C. Right click and pick Properties
D. Select the Decoding Tab
E. and Browse to or type in the desired location.
Selecting a different location for just one group? Simply click on the group instead of the folder, then in the Settings tab Deselect "Copy the Setting from the Parent", then follow D and E above.
B. Highlight "Newsgroups"
C. Right click and pick Properties
D. Select the Decoding Tab
E. and Browse to or type in the desired location.
Selecting a different location for just one group? Simply click on the group instead of the folder, then in the Settings tab Deselect "Copy the Setting from the Parent", then follow D and E above.
copyright 2004 abmefaq consortium