Usenet problems?

Is anyone here having problems with Usenet today?

I am using Astraweb and today it's incredibly slow and sometimes times out completely. It's going from 0 to 10 kB/sec.
I have tried reconnecting, rebooting the router, restarting the PC, disabling firewall/AV and changing usenet clients.

I have asked other Astraweb users and they are having no problems and downloading at full speed, so I am wondering if it's a problem with Plusnet's traffic management or something.
I am on Option 3.

Any idea why this is happening?

Plusnet is working fine for me,could be a 'local issue.

Which news server are you using?

Everything else is fine, it's only Usenet. Browsing is very quick but I noticed Usenet provider websites are all running very slow.

www.giganews.com
www.astraweb.com

Those websites are taking me 20 seconds to load... I just ran a tracert to the Astraweb EU servers and got this result;

Tracing route to eu.news.astraweb.com [193.202.122.136]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 19 ms 14 ms 16 ms lo0-plusnet.pte-ag2.plus.net [195.166.128.72]
3 186 ms 206 ms 214 ms ge0-0-0-504.pte-gw2.plus.net [84.92.4.90]
4 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms 80.239.193.141
5 14 ms 15 ms 14 ms ldn-bb1-link.telia.net [80.91.248.90]
6 19 ms 16 ms 33 ms ldn-b4-link.telia.net [80.91.249.130]
7 15 ms 19 ms 13 ms ge-6-22.car2.London1.Level3.net [4.68.111.181]
8 19 ms 16 ms 40 ms ae-32-52.ebr2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.139.126]

9 23 ms 24 ms 30 ms ae-2-2.ebr2.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [4.69.132.134]

10 36 ms 24 ms 23 ms ae-2-52.edge4.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [4.69.139.17
0]
11 23 ms 28 ms 25 ms REVELATION.edge4.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [212.72.4
0.70]
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 3450 ms * * unknown.ams.astraweb.com [193.202.122.136]
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 3205 ms 2592 ms 2959 ms unknown.ams.astraweb.com [193.202.122.136]

Trace complete.

I get this

Tracing route to eu.news.astraweb.com [193.202.122.107]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 24 ms 25 ms 25 ms lo0.plusnet.thn-ag1.plus.net [195.166.128.101]
3 25 ms 19 ms 20 ms vl703.thn-gw2.plus.net [84.92.4.242]
4 22 ms 22 ms 20 ms ldn-b4-link.telia.net [213.248.84.197]
5 22 ms 22 ms 21 ms ge-6-22.car2.London1.Level3.net [4.68.111.181]
6 22 ms 25 ms 26 ms ae-32-52.ebr2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.139.126]

7 30 ms 28 ms 29 ms ae-2-2.ebr2.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [4.69.132.134]

8 64 ms 64 ms 61 ms ae-2-52.edge4.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [4.69.139.17
0]
9 64 ms 68 ms 69 ms REVELATION.edge4.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [212.72.4
0.70]
10 1410 ms 715 ms 334 ms unknown.ams.astraweb.com [193.202.122.107]

Trace complete.
haven't used usenet today so can't help I'm afraid the web sites are slow loading though

Edited by deleted (Mon 23-Mar-09 23:24:42)

As soon as it hit mid night all the problems were fixed so I think it might have been throttling.
Those web pages now load in less than a second and I am downloading at my full line speed of 830 kB/sec...

The tracert looks better too;

Tracing route to eu.news.astraweb.com [193.202.122.134]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 15 ms 14 ms 14 ms lo0-plusnet.pte-ag2.plus.net [195.166.128.72]
3 16 ms 14 ms 13 ms ge0-0-0-504.pte-gw2.plus.net [84.92.4.90]
4 13 ms 14 ms 13 ms 80.239.193.141
5 13 ms 13 ms 14 ms ldn-bb2-link.telia.net [80.91.248.94]
6 13 ms 13 ms 14 ms ldn-b4-link.telia.net [80.91.251.13]
7 14 ms 14 ms 13 ms ge-6-22.car2.London1.Level3.net [4.68.111.181]
8 17 ms 18 ms 18 ms ae-32-52.ebr2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.139.126]

9 28 ms 24 ms 24 ms ae-2-2.ebr2.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [4.69.132.134]

10 24 ms 23 ms 22 ms ae-2-52.edge4.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [4.69.139.17
0]
11 22 ms 21 ms 23 ms REVELATION.edge4.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [212.72.4
0.70]
12 21 ms 22 ms 23 ms unknown.ams.astraweb.com [193.202.122.134]

Trace complete.

Edited by deleted (Tue 24-Mar-09 00:48:22)

Most probably was throttling then, I know miine is throttled in the afternoons and evenings there is a graph with throttling on Plusnet, if your are on one of the legace products (BBYW) just type this in the search box and it'll give you the throttling times

I am on Option 3 so it should have been downloading at atleast 30 kB/sec but sometimes it was completely blocked and I couldn't download at all.

Anyway, it's back to normal today and currently downloading full line speed.

I'm on option 3 as well, I have noticed that there is sometimes a lag before it gets up to full speed, if I start a download at midnight sometimes the speed doens;t increase till 30 minutes later, have you checked the plusnet site there might have been a problem

Another thought did you check your billed usage, is it possible your billing date is today and you had gone over your quota

@Zildjian285, I know a couple of the gateways are pretty busy at the moment during peak. Not sure which ones off the top of my head although you might want to try a reboot of your router to get on a different one.