Newsgroup Servers

The BTnews saga continues.

Based on the useful advice from the newsgroup I took out a BT broadband connection and tried to use "news.btinternet.com" as my news server. I'm using Agent so I entered "news.btinternet.com" and ticked "no log in required". This worked OK for just over a day and then it wouldn't login with the error message "invalid login/password etc."

Entering combinations of all the BT passwords and user names yielded no improvement so I phoned BT yet again. I was passed from pillar to post through THREE advisors of increasing seniority not one of which had ever heard of news.btinternet.com! I finally persuaded the third advisor that it really existed and he has promised to investigate further and ring me back.

While waiting for the ring back I reread the newsgroup comments and tried "news.btopenworld.com" using "no login required". So far this has worked perfectly and this post is via this server.

Since this worked I tried "news.btopenworld.com" again with "no login required". This time it worked for a few minutes but as I am typing this the invalid login/password message has returned.

For the moment I am staying on openwold and I hope this continues to be OK. To be fair to BT, while the lack of knowledge is appalling, their advice service was well organised. I was on

0800 numbers which were answered almost immediately. The last two advisors spent nearly an hour on it and used direct screen access to try to sort out the problem.

P.S. Although I no longer subcribe to Tiscali/Pipex I have just tried the old "nntp.dsl.pipex.com" . It accepts news login with the old Pipex user name and password !!

Jim

There is a validation issue that BT introduced some time back, and it requires your email address and password in the Agent setup, which we use.

This implies that the BT server 'knows' that you are validated, even though the news server does not require a log-in, if that makes sense?

So, we have an email account set up for BTConnect.com, but never use it, but this is the authorisation part that BT need for the newsgroup apparently.

If you go to BT-Yahoo and look in there for server authorisation, it should have something on it.

We use the broadband for other pop3 accounts, we do not use BT at all, just as a carrier. Peter

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Rushden, UK snipped-for-privacy@prepair.co.uk

Jim

I'm sorry to hear of your trials. It's probably no comfort to you but I've used the combination of 'news.btinternet.com' and 'Agent'for about ten years without problems. 'No log-in' is correct. However, if it works with the alternative server at BT Openworld and you get a decent throughput (check it out with the meter on Giganews

then you're home and dry.

--

Chris Edwards (in deepest Dorset) "There *must* be an easier way!"