NNTPGrab

I've downloaded an old post (200 days). The first 4,5GB would download fine, slowly, but fine. It appears that this post was perhaps not cached on the server. Downloading with lots of connections (where normally I can easily get full speed with 1-2 connections) appeared to help.

At the last ~450MB the download pretty much stopped. I now set the maximum number of connections (8 in my case). Every time I pressed the "pause" button twice it would download another 10-20MB. The first 5 connections would stay dead (stuck at 0% and disconnect after a while) and the other 3 would download 10-20MB or so (and then die like the first five). So after a while hitting pause I got to the last 1.3MB.

And that's where it got really ugly.. Five files (5x300KB posts, each post for a different file) were to be completed. But as I said.. The first five connections would stay dead. I could leave this on for hours but those last five files will never complete.

If I put something else in the queue that'll start downloading at full speed with 3 connections, still leaving those 5 dead.

Sure, the fault is with the usenetserver. But if nntpgrab would consider those 5x300KB as lost, create those 5 files (that would probably still offer 44/45 blocks) and start PAR.. Well. That would be a better use of time compared to having 5x300KB in the queue that will complete when pigs fly.