Usenet Central Review

Usenet Central highlights:

  • 1,100 days binary retention
  • 1,400 days text retention
  • Up to 50 connections
  • 256-bit SSL encryption
  • Free web image viewer
  • GrabIt + Usenet search

Usenet Central Review

Usenet Central offers a nice mix of retention, features and value. Starting with high retention and free secure (SSL) encryption. Performance is solid with Usenet Central offering 50 connections. Not that you’ll need near that many connections. We maxed out 25 Mbps with 10 connections. Other premium features include a simple web image viewer and a custom version of GrabIt newsreader with the premium Usenet search feature.

Usenet Central offers 1,100 days of binary retention and growing. With 1,400+ days of text retention across 100,000+ newsgroups. We tested a Ubuntu distribution at around 710 days and had one incomplete part. With only 14 missing blocks it was an easy PAR repair.

Usenet Central news server information:
– Secure server farm – secure.usenetcentral.com
– Standard server farm – news.usenetcentral.com

They offer the following port settings:
– Secure ports: 563, 5563
– Standard ports: 119, 20, 23, 53, 443, 8080, 9000, 9001, 9002

As with any new Usenet provider one of the lingering questions is the quality of support. While the service is new the team isn’t. They have experience in the industry so you can expect knowledgeable support. Usenet Central offers live chat support as well as a knowledgebase. They also have a start up guide section with tutorials for popular newsreaders including GrabIt (included), SABnzbd, Newsleecher and Binreader.

Account options: Usenet Central offers a variety of plans ranging from 6 GB a month up to unlimited Usenet access. All plans include free 256-bit SSL encryption and a custom edition of GrabIt newsreader with search.

Here’s a summary of the Usenet Central accounts:
– Unlimited Usenet – $10.95 a month
– 35 GB a month – $6.95 a month
– 15 GB a month – $4.95 a month
– 6 GB a month – $3.95 a month

New customers are eligible for a free trial of Usenet Central. The free account offers 14 days of newsgroup access with up to 15 GB of downloads. The 14 day Usenet Central free trial includes access to both the web image viewer and GrabIt newsreader.

Usenet Central has hit the ground running and we look forward to tracking their progress for years to come. They have the most important areas of a quality Usenet service covered – retention, performance, reliability and support. The GrabIt newsreader with Usenet search is a nice value add as it makes downloading from Usenet more convenient.

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