Hey everyone,

The small but passionate team behind the Usenet Providers Map is back with a major update!

After countless hours of research, design tweaks, and community feedback, Version 2025-02-23 of the Usenet Providers & Backbones Tree is live! 🚀

Check it out here:
🔗 Interactive Map: https://usenet.rexum.space/tree
🔗 Direct SVG: Click here

What’s New?

• Ownership clarity: Added real company names to untangle the corporate web behind providers.
• Bye-bye Frugal Bonus: Removed from the map (it’s no longer on the Its Hosted backbone, and its status is murky).
• Streamlined info: The dedicated table page now hosts all extra details (linked at the top of the map too).

Why This Matters

Use this map to:
✅ Visualize provider/reseller connections and ownership.
✅ Identify backbones you *might* be missing (though one backbone is usually enough—they peer with each other!).
✅ Compare retention times (some keep data longer than others).

A Heartfelt Thanks… and a Small Frustration

First, …

Hi, I am located in the U.S. and got an AT&T fiber connection of 1gbps, however, eweka download speeds do not go over 5mb/s. I will get 20mb/s somedays but never more than that. I was getting 100mb/s from frugal but stopped it due to way too many incomplete packages. Eweka is slow but has never failed on me so I’m happy with it. I am using port 443 and 50 connections, I have tried playing with the connections but it does not make a difference … Any help will be appreciated.

I am currently subscribed to Newshosting.com (Omicron US / AMS, DMCA), Eweka.net (Omicron AMS, NTD), and Newsdemon.com (Usenetexpress.com US/NL, DMCA).

Is there a better way to go in terms of reliability?

Just a heads up to anyone in Australia getting poor speeds or not meeting their expectations.

I’ve always used Newhosting and once I switched to fibre 1 gigabit down I could only ever receive around 65MB/s down at absolute best. My system was more than capable, with bandwidth showing 110MB/s and the rest of the hardware showing 400MB/s+

I read countless discussions of people with similar experiences in Australia, if anything I was getting a better experience. And when I started my own discussion the verdict was I won’t fully saturate a gigabit connection in Australia.

I tried many different providers but everyone else was actually worse. I got absolutely flamed here and on other discussion boards for it being my config and hardware

Yesterday I looked into it again and thought I’d try Frugal. Instantly, I was pulling 110MB/s down with their Sydney server (I’m in QLD)

So just an FYI if you’ve been trying to saturate your gigabit connection

Just wondering when the general consensus is on indexer comparisons - how would the two unnamed indexers compare to drunk slug for content and retention is for example.

This is the feature I use the most on Plex to watch anime with my friend, I’m pretty sure if they implement it back next it’s gonna be a paid option.. sucks.

About an hour ago, my plex account was accessed by some jabroni from Russia. They changed my password and my email address as soon as they got in. Thank goodness that plex sends out an email with the email address change with an option to revert to the prior email address within 7 days. I’ve gotten my account back, changed the password and enable 2FA for future logins.

I just wanted to share and recommend 2FA for anyone else that runs a plex server. Keep your account safe!

Been using Plex for years now. Wouldn’t say I’m a “power user”. No dedicated server, just run it from my personal computer. Only really use the basic features. Upload media files, subtitle files, and play on my TV.

But haven’t really explored all of the features or extensions/add-ons that I’ve heard people talk about. Are there any that you’d almost universally recommend for quality of life improvement? Any that might be more niche but would still be worth checking out?

While this isnt my main client obviously, every once in a while i still use my Star Wars Edition X360, and when i do i see if the plex app still functions. So weird seeing it, in some ways i prefer the simplicity of the old ui

🔹 I can ask my AI assistant (Home Assistant’s voice integration) to shuffle a random episode of any show.
🔹 It can automatically turn on my Apple TV, set the right input and volume for a particular show, and start playing.
🔹 If I pause a movie, the lights slowly brighten. If I resume, they dim again.
🔹 Movie night? Home Assistant detects when a film is playing and turns on Hue Sync for an immersive experience.

It’s one of those things I didn’t know I needed… but now I can’t go back.

If you’re into automation, check it out and let me know what you think!
📺 Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sfb-PNY5uQ8

Also curious, anyone else using Home Assistant with Plex? What are you using it for?

It’s fairly crude at the moment as it has to parse the stdout from the command line tool, but I’ve developed “iplayarr”which runs in the background and presents itself as a newznab indexer and sabnzbd download client. I’ve tested with a few shows and this very early alpha version works with very few hiccups!

https://github.com/Nikorag/iplayarr

If anyone has any tips or suggestions they’re absolutely welcome.

I’ve released a MAJOR update to tdarr_inform.

Still works as a sonarr/radarr/whisparr Custom Script by default,

but now features a --mode server argument that can be run as a service, and set as a Webhook in the *arrs.

https://github.com/deathbybandaid/tdarr_inform:

So I read a lot that tailscale is a great way to connect to your sonarr server remotely. I already run surfshark vpn on the server for general privacy. I assume you can’t connect to tailscale at the same time or is there a way?

EDIT: Thanks for the ideas everyone. I ended solving by using Practical-Test’s idea of using the bypass feature in Surfshark and it work.

because I run a pi4 for streaming I would only want the x264 files so I am sure I don’t need any transcoding but really sure how I can do this.

I already added custom formats from trasher but it doesn’t seem to work…
already using these custom formats: trash x265 blocker and trasher x264

I only download 1080p so the x265 blocker should work. But should I also add hevc to the blocklist?

EDIT: In quality profiles you also need to give “score” to the custom formats so sonarr knows what it should and should not download

This screenshot (below) shows something I manually do on occassion to find items in my backlog: filter missing -> edit movies -> select -> search. The benefit of this is many titles are then found and processed in the download queue. I realize this is something radarr does on some schedule but I’m not aware of how to modify that schedule or where to find the results (other than the download queue).

I should note that the scheduled/automated search and download of a majority of titles is successful. However it seems that my manual housekeeping method often locates and downloads titles that the scheduled/automated process has overlooked.

Can someone help me understand more about this process? I suspect there’s something more detailed about the occassional log entry: DownloadDecisionMaker: Processing 120 releases

https://imgur.com/a/olFXyO9