this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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I'm in the US but this should still apply to the UK
Yes, as long as your provider offers SSL encryption. If you're using SSL encryption, the ISP can see what servers you're connected to but not what data is being transferred and that should be enough protection. If there isn't an option for SSL, you might want to use a VPN.
It is cheaper, but availability and speed are what you're paying for if you sign up for a usenet provider.
I've been using both usenet and torrents for the past few years and never gotten a complaint. Usenet is my main source of everything. Only my torrent client itself is behind a VPN. All the arrs are unsecured and SABnzbd uses the SSL port for my usenet provider.
I get what encryption does. I also understand why it doesn't make torrents safe. That's why I got irritated when people were trying to claim encryption is why usenet is safer, cause torrents have encryption too. Even if Usenet is safe the reasoning people used is bad.
I think I am the most worried about indexer sites as these are banned or blocked in my country. Weirdly enough the Usenet ones aren't blocked and I am wondering why. I believe they have some kind of loop hole.
The monetary barrier to usenet is probably why torrent trackers would be more popular, and thus more likely to be blocked by national regulators. As to why you're far more likely to get an ISP letter for torrenting than for using usenet, while the bittorrent protocol means than if you download a release you're also seeding it to others, paying usenet providers for access to their cached releases means that you're only downloading releases from them, and not uploading anything. Usenet providers do sometimes have to remove releases from their databases upon request, which is why paying for providers on at least two nodes can help in mitigating the odds of a release not being available.
Comparing the cost of a VPN to Real-Debrid + a Usenet Indexer + A Usenet Provider depends on which services you choose, but in the case of ProtonVPN , NZBGeek, and Frugal Usenet it comes to $72 vs $84 a year, with the latter being more if you want to add a backup usenet block plan from a different node (block plans have a one-time upfront cost and last until you use up the plan's download capacity). If you forgo the additional block plan and NZBGeek, instead using a combination of the free tiers from indexers such as Tabula Rasa, NZB Finder, Miatrix, and DrunkenSlug (most allowing for 5 free downloads a day), Real-Debrid + Frugal Usenet is the same as ProtonVPN at $72 a year. Also note that Real-Debrid is able to cache torrents on request as long as someone's currently seeding them on public torrent trackers, and that with usenet to download a release that is X days old, you need a usenet provider with at least X days of retention.
it's not that they sniff traffic for torrents because that's as you said encrypted it's that bad actors can join public trackers and gather all the ips and send them off to your isp if your on private trackers that you trust you don't need a VPN
This is also why peer block was invented. To stop people connecting to honey pots.
People keep saying Usenet has better speed but I am not buying that. I regularly match the speed of my internet connection.
As for avaliability I am not sure. I am aware that there is limited retention time with usenet and that their are multiple "backbones". How does this effect the avaliability of downloads?
If your internet isn't great then it won't be much better for you vs torrents.
I get 1 gbps and my usenet host can fully saturate my download speeds.
My usenet host retention is currently over 5000 days. Most downloads that fail are because of DMCA takedowns. In those cases, 99% of the time, Sonarr or Radarr will find another one still under the same provider. It's only when all of those fail that it'll turn to torrents.
I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to use torrents in the past three years.
I've seen torrents easily saturate 350 Mbps connections. Speed is actually one of the advantages of bittorrent protocol and has inspired things such as Windows peer to peer update feature.
I've actually been having problems with downloads from an indexer (nzbplanet) that don't download. I wonder if I have something configured wrong. I am not sure how to tell an indexer site what provider and backbone I am on.
A usenet download can either fail due to being taken down after a DMCA or similar request, not being in one of the newsgroups cached by one's usenet provider, or because one's usenet provider has fewer days of retention than the age of the usenet release. In terms of telling a binary newsreader program (i.e. downloader) such as SABnzbd or NZBGet what your provider is, there's a page in the settings of those and similar applications to enter the domain name, port, username, and password associated with any usenet provider subscriptions and/or block plans you have.
I maybe wasn't clear. I have SABnzbd setup with the provider correctly (got it to download one file I found successfully). What I mean is can I set the indexer websites to only show stuff that's avaliable from my backbone as I only have one usenet provider on the Omicron backbone.
Unfortunately as most usenet indexers aren't usenet providers or vise versa, as far as I know there isn't a way for indexers to know which backbones have cached a given release or not. If any are able to deliver that it would be Easynews, which is both an indexer and provider, but even then that would just be for releases indexed by Easynews itself.