HKBN, usenet, Highwinds
My ISP, Hong Kong Broadband Network ("HKBN") offers me, a dedicated fibre internet connection with a guaranteed speed of 100Mbps. This sounds great, but that guaranteed speed is for connections to the Hong Kong Internet eXchange ("HKIX")! For foreign connections HKBN claim its on a best efforts basis. Through testing it seems that HKBN has a cap of around 20Mbps for foreign connections, which actually isn't that bad at all, but this is the absolute maximum speed I found I could connect at.
For most of my downloading I use usenet. When I was PCCW's Netvigator I was on their 30Mbps plan and I was pretty much guaranteed that speed for usenet downloading, regardless of where their servers were (tried this with the likes of Astraweb and Blocknews). With HKBN, if a newgroup provider's servers are abroad (like Astraweb or Blocknews) it seemed speeds were capped at around 20Mbps.
There is one newgroup provider that has servers in Hong Kong, Giganews. While Giganews does have a solid reputation, its monthly prices are quite high compared to other providers (I really want just plain usenet, don't need extra features like VPN or newsreader software). However, with Giganews I was getting speeds of 100Mbps (tried this out on a trial account)!!! Giganews do offer an unlimited account with just basic downloading, but even then its around US$25 a month. Its affiliate reseller, Supernews, is available via specific sites for US$9.99 a month, but alas it does not use Giganews's Hong Kong server.
Recently a bunch of newsgroup providers had their blackfriday specials at very good rates. The majority of them were Highwinds resellers. Highwinds has an OK reputation, and if all things were equal (i.e. pricing with the likes of Astraweb or UseNetNow) I would not go with them, but they had some very good offers. For example with Thundernews I was able to get an unlimited plan with 50 connections for US$6.50 a month. Also, (not through blackfriday, but another promotion) I was able to get a 1TB block account with NewsgroupDirect (note, affiliate link) for US$50. My view was, even though I'm getting download speeds of 20Mbps I might as well get the cheapest option.
To my surprise I found that with both Thundernews and NewgroupDirect I was able to get download speeds of around 70Mbps to 100Mbps!! From the tracroutes on my computer it seemed to suggest that I was being connected to US servers and not any Hong Kong servers (also I'm not aware of Highwinds having servers in Hong Kong). Naturally very happy with these fast connection speeds and they are coming at a fraction of the price I would pay if I decided to go with Giganews.
