During September 2008, Giganews completed storage upgrades which increased retention levels to 240 days. Shortly thereafter, Giganews' upload traffic jumped to a sustained level averaging well over 400 megabits per second, representing more than 4.3 terabytes of new user generated content and discussions per day. Giganews has seen steady upload growth throughout the decade, but the pace following the recent storage upgrade exceeded all expectations. The chart below displays the Usenet upload growth Giganews has experienced since January 2001:

"After our storage upgrades we noticed a considerable increase in overall usage and especially uploads," said Philip Molter, CTO of Giganews. "Due to the increase we have plans in motion to install further storage upgrades that will maintain our targeted retention level."

Members will experience retention levels slightly below 240 days until the upgrade is complete. Members can also expect Giganews to announce further storage upgrades in 2009 which will extend retention well beyond 240 days.

Due to the ever increasing popularity of Giganews Usenet, Giganews has actively improved its service and performance throughout 2008. Beyond retention upgrades, Giganews also recently announced the establishment of a network peering link at the London Internet Exchange™ and doubling capacity at the Amsterdam Internet Exchange™.

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

Giganews' new low-cost memberships are designed to offer Usenet access to a broad range of people from around the world. Giganews members from many countries have been requesting lower priced memberships to make it easier for them to introduce friends and family to Usenet. Increasing the trial period from 3 days to 14 days will help those new to Usenet who need extra time to explore.

Details on all Giganews memberships and extended free trial offer can be found on the company's website http://www.giganews.com.

"As the leading premium Usenet provider, Giganews has a reputation for excellent service. We are expanding on that reputation by offering low-cost memberships and providing a longer 14 day trial, allowing a larger scope of people to enjoy Giganews' Usenet service." said Michael Douglass, head of product development at Giganews, Inc.

In addition to these new memberships, Giganews is increasing download allowances for current Silver members to 35 Gigabytes per month and Bronze members to 10 Gigabytes per month at no additional cost to current members.

Enhancing membership options, increasing download allowances, and expanding free trials to 14 days is part of Giganews' broader strategy to improve services and make Usenet more available than ever. Over the last year Giganews has:

• Increased download speeds for members by peering with Internet Service Providers though Internet Exchanges.
  • German Commercial Internet Exchange (DE-CIX™)
  • London Internet Exchange (LINX™)
  • Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMSIX™)
• Set the Usenet retention record with 240 days in binary newsgroups.
• Launched increased article numbering to support Usenet's growth.
• Offered support for PayPal® payment methods.
• Allowed members to create custom usernames.

Giganews is committed to maintaining the premium services it provides to its members, and the company is excited at the opportunity to continue to improve members' experiences and make Usenet easier to access than ever.

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

Giganews' membership in DE-CIX facilitates open peering with ISPs, content providers, and all other organizations that are DE-CIX customers. Joining DE-CIX enables Giganews to better serve members on networks not only in Germany, but also in Central and Eastern Europe through fast and reliable network peering connections.

"As with all of our peering arrangements, joining DE-CIX allows us to exchange traffic with numerous service providers at a negligible cost to all parties involved," said Philip Molter, CTO of Giganews. "We are also very excited at the opportunity to better service our German, Central European, and Russian members with faster download speeds and more reliable service."

Establishment of a peered connection point at DE-CIX is the latest of many actions undertaken by Giganews this year. In addition to joining LINX and expanding at AM-SIX, Giganews has also unveiled support for custom usernames, added PayPal payment methods, increased binary article retention to 240 days, and determined, internally resolved, and alerted the Usenet community to the issue of 64-bit article numbering.

Peering With Giganews

Giganews offers network and NNTP peering through direct cross connects and peering networks such as DE-CIX, LINX and AMS-IX. For more information on peering directly with Giganews please contact peering@giganews.com.

About DE-CIX

DE-CIX Management GmbH is the carrier neutral and indepent owner of the DE-CIX international Internet Exchange ("IX") in Frankfurt. The Company also owns and operates the Hamburg "WORK-IX" and the Munich "ALP-IX" regional Internet Exchanges.

The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of the eco Internet Industry Association, a non-profit organization. eco is the largest European Internet industry association, promoting its commercial development as well as providing advice and support to companies that do business with or on the Internet.

Founded in 1995, DE-CIX has established an environment for the bilateral settlement-free exchange of Internet traffic ("peering") between all types of Internet service providers ("ISPs") including broadband and content providers. Originally started as a project founded by 3 German ISPs, DE-CIX is now the largest Internet exchange in the heart of Europe and one of the top 3 IXs globally.

Today DE-CIX has over 280 customers from 30 nations using peering to lower costs and increase IP performance and resilience. By serving customers in 11 data center facilities in the city of Frankfurt, DE-CIX enhances the ability of its customers to expand their business and exchange Internet traffic with more networks than anyone else in Central- and Eastern Europe - efficiently and securely.

For more information please visit the DE-CIX website: http://www.de-cix.net/

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

In 2005, Giganews contributed to world-record data transfer speeds when AMS-IX became the first Internet exchange to break the barrier of 100Gbps of sustained throughput.

"The fact that our current individual network capacity at AMS-IX is just short of what was considered a milestone for the entire exchange three years ago speaks not only to the tremendous growth of Giganews in Europe, but also illustrates that the Internet at large is rapidly maturing as demand for reliable delivery of rich multimedia content grows," said Philip Molter, Chief Technical Officer of Giganews.

In general, open peering at Internet exchange points is a desirable practice because of the benefits of reduced costs for traffic delivery, as well as improved fault-tolerance and efficiency in routing traffic among Internet exchange members.

AMS-IX in particular, and Amsterdam in general, is an especially strategic peering point for various reasons. AMS-IX has more connected members than any other Internet exchange worldwide, which ensures that Giganews customers on numerous European networks receive the same excellent performance across the board. The relatively central location of Amsterdam in Europe mitigates the effect of latency for customers throughout Europe. Henk Steenman, CTO of AMS-IX, says "We see many parties aggregating 10GE connections to the exchange these days, however redundant connections of over 40GE are still quite rare and unique. It takes a company with a serious network infrastructure and premium service with dedication to its customers to be able to drive those investments through and implement such a high-end roll-out."

Expanded network capacity for its European customers is the latest in a series of service improvements undertaken by Giganews this year, including support for custom usernames, accepting payments via PayPal™, increasing binary article retention to 240 days, and internally resolving and alerting the Usenet community to the issue of 64-bit article numbering.

Peering With Giganews

Giganews offers network and NNTP peering through direct cross connects and peering networks such as AMS-IX and LINX™. For more information on peering directly with Giganews please contact peering@giganews.com.

About AMS-IX

AMS-IX (Amsterdam Internet Exchange) is a neutral and independent not-for-profit Internet exchange providing services since the early 1990's. The AMS-IX platform provides high quality, non-blocking professional peering services for all types of IP traffic whether data or VoIP. AMS-IX hosts the first mobile peering points worldwide, the Global GPRS Roaming Exchange (GRX) and the Mobile Data Exchange (MDX), as well as solutions for broadcasting traffic with the multicast peering service.

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

"Our motivation behind joining LINX was primarily to reinforce our ability to serve customers in the U.K. with speedy and consistently reliable service. From a business standpoint, we also cannot ignore the cost-saving benefits offered by open peering," explained Philip Molter, CTO of Giganews. "We can pass traffic to - and receive traffic from - the many U.K. ISPs that are LINX members in an extremely fast and direct manner with no costs incurred. This also benefits smaller service providers whose customers can now enjoy Giganews at full speed, with little cost burden on the provider."

Establishing open peering arrangements at neutral Internet Exchange Points is a highly desirable practice because the Internet Exchange members are able to significantly improve latency, bandwidth, fault-tolerance, and the routing of traffic between themselves at no additional costs. Without a neutral Internet Exchange to accommodate open peering, back-and-forth traffic delivery would be dependent on individual upstream providers and would not be guaranteed to follow an efficient route across networks.

Giganews has already seen much benefit from their initial connection, and plans to double their network capacity at LINX in the near future.

Giganews' membership of the London Internet Exchange is the most recent of many service improvements Giganews has undertaken this year. Since January, Giganews has unveiled support for custom usernames, added PayPal™ payment methods, increased binary article retention to 240 days, and internally resolved and alerted the Usenet community to the issue of 64-bit article numbering.

Peering With Giganews

Giganews offers network and NNTP peering through direct cross connects and peering networks such as LINX and AMS-IX. For more information on peering directly with Giganews please contact peering@giganews.com.

About The London Internet Exchange (LINX)

LINX is a mutually owned membership association for operators of Internet Protocol networks. Established in 1994, LINX provides a neutral interconnection facility and peering platform while also representing the interests of its 298 members on matters of public policy. The LINX platform has a global reputation for quality, performance and technical excellence and as a result, is able to access 175,000 Internet routes reaching in excess of 40 countries from Europe, North America, the Middle East, the Far East, Australasia and Africa.

For more information please visit the LINX website: www.linx.net

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

With all of the recent press from the New York Attorney General in his crusade against child sexual abuse images, Giganews performed a study using the information from his office as well as information at Giganews' disposal. They found two things in this study:

First, by using the New York Attorney General's information, 99.9997% of Usenet has been found to be free of child sexual abuse images. It is clear that Usenet is not the haven for child sexual abuse that some have recently attempted to claim. Regardless of the small percentage, Giganews has never and will never turn a blind eye to the problem.

Second, the Internet Watch Foundation is the most effective agency fighting the spread of this filth. Unlike any US based organization, the IWF actively monitors suspected and known newsgroups as well as any specific images reported to them by Internet users. After they verify the materials are, in fact, child sexual abuse, they transmit takedown notices to all member Usenet providers.

Giganews is extremely thankful to have the IWF acting as its "Child Sexual Abuse Department". Through its association with the IWF, Giganews has a method of verifying reports of child sexual abuse imagery. Ronald Yokubaitis, Co-CEO of Giganews, stated: "The IWF is the only electronic mechanism we have that helps us identify and thus delete this material from our Usenet feed. We are glad to partner with them in actually reducing the availability of these materials online."

Peter Robbins, CEO of the IWF, recognized Giganews' efforts in helping our shared fight: "Your leadership and exemplary corporate social responsibility are clear. The IWF's success in minimising the availability of child sexual abuse content around the world is a testament to the funding and cooperation of our member companies so thank you very much for your enduring support, it is truly appreciated."

About the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) IWF is the UK's internet 'Hotline' for the public and IT professionals to report potentially illegal online content within its remit. The IWF works in partnership with the online industry, law enforcement, government, the education sector, charities, international partners and the public to minimise the availability of this content, specifically, child sexual abuse content hosted anywhere in the world and criminally obscene and incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK.

IWF is an independent self-regulatory body, funded by the EU and the wider online industry, including internet service providers, mobile operators and manufacturers, content service providers, filtering companies, search providers, trade associations and the financial sector as well as other organisations that support us for corporate social responsibility reasons.

IWF helps internet service providers and hosting companies to combat abuse of their networks through its national 'notice and take-down' service which alerts them to potentially illegal content within IWF's remit on their systems and IWF provides unique data to law enforcement partners in the UK and abroad to assist investigations into the distributers of potentially illegal online content. As a result of this partnership approach, less than 1% of child sexual abuse content, known to the IWF, has apparently been hosted in the UK since 2003, down from 18% in 1997. As sexually abusive images of children are primarily hosted abroad, IWF facilitates the industry-led initiative to protect users from inadvertent exposure to this content by blocking access to it through our provision of a dynamic list of child sexual abuse URLs.

Please note that "child pornography", "child porn" and "kiddie porn" are not acceptable terms. The use of such language acts to legitimise images which are not pornography, rather, they are permanent records of children being sexually abused and as such should be referred to as child sexual abuse images.

For more information about IWF visit www.iwf.org.uk

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

Retention is a term that denotes the maximum length of time an article will be available on a particular Usenet server. Retention rates can and do vary among Usenet service providers, and the 240 days of binary retention offered by Giganews is by far the highest in the industry.

"Our most recent retention expansion was implemented precisely on schedule and has ensured that we remain a step ahead of the competition, not just with regards to article storage but in all areas important to Usenet consumers," said Giganews.

This upgrade is another step in a continuous effort to ensure the Giganews® Usenet service offers industry leading service that remains on the innovative cutting-edge. This year, Giganews has also offered support for custom usernames, added support for payments via PayPal, and announced the need to move to 64-bit Usenet article numbering.

Expanded retention levels will be available among all single- and multi-part binary newsgroups. Customers will not need to refresh or adjust any settings in their news reader clients to take advantage of the expanded retention levels.

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

According to RFC 3977, newsgroup article numbers must not exceed 2,147,483,647 (about 2.1 bllion), the maximum value of a 32-bit signed integer. Section 6 of the RFC specifies that "While servers MUST NOT send article numbers greater than [2,147,483,647], client and server developers are advised to use internal structures and datatypes capable of handling larger values in anticipation of such a change."

As suggested in the RFC, Giganews' custom-written news server software already provides internal support for article numbering up to the maximum value of a 64-bit unsigned integer, 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (over eighteen quintillion). Some news reader clients may encounter issues with article numbers in this range. Most news reader clients download headers by requesting article numbers that are higher than a previous "high bound," and limiting or resetting the article numbering could cause these clients to stop showing new articles. Because of this, Giganews has chosen to continue incrementing article numbers past 2.14 billion. In fact, older NNTP RFCs 977 and 2980 provided no upper limit to article numbers.

Giganews is advising all Usenet client and NNTP software developers to adopt a 64-bit unsigned integer format for article numbering.

Developers that would like additional information regarding this issue are encouraged to contact Giganews using the support form located at http://www.giganews.com/contact.html.

Adoption of an increased article numbering range is the latest of many actions Giganews has taken to accommodate the sustained growth of Usenet, such as their recent announcement of 240 days of retention in binary newsgroups.

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

• 240 Days Binary Retention Upgrade
• Custom Usernames Support
• PayPal Support

In July of last year, Giganews , Inc., the world's foremost premium Usenet access provider, broke the Usenet retention record by offering 200 days in binary newsgroups. Today, Giganews announced that they have started the process to upgrade retention in binary newsgroups to 240 days. Giganews expects to have the upgrade complete during September 2008.

This continues Giganews’ efforts to improve the Giganews® Usenet offering, including support for custom usernames and the ability to pay for services using the popular PayPal® payment service.

http://www.giganews.com/news/article/custom-usernames.html
http://www.giganews.com/news/article/paypal.html

"Giganews prides itself on delivering the premium Usenet services our members expect. We enjoy implementing features that improve our members’ experience and we are excited about offering 240 days of retention across binary newsgroups," commented David Vogelpohl, Vice President of Marketing at Giganews.

The storage infrastructure needed for this retention upgrade has been ordered and Giganews expects to have the upgrade complete during September 2008. After the storage infrastructure is in place, retention will grow from 200 days to 240 days.

Giganews’ new retention levels will be available across all binary newsgroups including single-part and multi-part binary newsgroups. It should also be noted that news reading software can be used to access Giganews’ full retention without the aid of message ID based files like NZBs; although these files will also work with the Giganews service.

In addition to this retention upgrade, Giganews is planning further service improvements for its Usenet access service by the end of the year.

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

As the largest Usenet provider in the world, Giganews has an expansive base of international members who have varying requirements for purchasing things online. The decision to accept PayPal is designed to address these requirements for Giganews members across the globe.

In addition to expanded payment method support, Giganews has also internationalized its service by offering its website in eight different languages. The company hopes that accepting PayPal will make it even easier for members to subscribe to Giganews® Usenet services.

"PayPal support is one of our most requested features, and we are proud to accept PayPal for our members. The exciting thing about Usenet is that it allows people from all over the world to connect to each other. By supporting PayPal we hope to make premium Usenet more accessible for a global community." announced Giganews.

Current Giganews members may select to pay using PayPal by logging into their Control Panel and selecting "Change Payment". New Giganews members may choose to pay via PayPal when they sign up for service.

New Giganews members will now have the option to create their own custom username when they sign up for a Giganews account. For existing members, the process is just as easy.

Existing Giganews members need only sign into their Giganews control panel and select the "Change Username" link on the panel's homepage. There the current member will enter their desired username and click "Change Username". An existing member's newly changed username will be in effect about 15 minutes after they have submitted it for change.

"Giganews is a company made up of Internet users. Each and every one of our employees understands how difficult it can be to remember all the usernames a person must keep track of for various websites and services. By allowing our members to create custom usernames, we're trying to improve the user experience in a way that we ourselves appreciate as members of the Usenet community," commented David Vogelpohl, VP of Marketing and Sales at Giganews.

This new feature comes as a result of requests by Giganews members seeking an easier way to remember their username.

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

It was great getting to meet so many people from the Usenet world, and it was inspiring to watch everyone connect and get to know each other.

Our staff and friends had a wonderful time and are very thankful to everyone who attended.

Without the support of members and webmasters, Usenet would be a much less interesting place.

We hope you enjoy the pictures. We'll have the videos up soon :)

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

The guest list will be comprised of winners of a photo and video contest for Giganews customers. Winners will only receive tickets to the event and must pay for their own hotel and travel expenses. Here’s how to enter:

1. Print any of the images ("props") located at http://www.giganews.com/contest/props.html .
2. Take a photo or video of one of the printed props somewhere in your hometown – the more interesting, the better!
   
   (Natural landmarks and famous monuments or buildings are obvious choices, but anything is fair game. Remember, the focus is on uniqueness and creativity.)
3. Post your video or photo on the binary newsgroup giganews.contest.
   The "giganews.contest" newsgroup will be moderated, so please keep this in mind when posting. No inappropriate entries will be allowed.
4. The giganews.contest newsgroup is only available on Giganews’ news servers. By posting your entry to giganews.contest you will be automatically identified by Giganews through your Giganews username and entered into the contest.
5. You may submit multiple pictures or videos, but you will only receive credit for one entry.
6. Winners will be randomly selected from the pool of entries and sent an invitation with a special code which you will use to reserve your spot on the guest list.

Contest Rules

Giganews would also like to thank Vincent Charretier with Telecharger-Newsgroup.com for his help in coordinating things in Paris. Vincent was a huge help and we’re looking forward to seeing him at the party.

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

The Flame Wars™ game stars you as a hotshot pilot in the Giganews Fleet, tasked with navigating the worlds of Usenet newsgroups in search of stolen articles protected by intergalactic trolls.

In every group, the trolls fiercely protect their loot, determined to end your session by hurling nonstop flames. Collect groups of articles to receive power-ups, such as kill-file missiles to deal with trolls or the Giganews Accelerator to increase the transfer speed of your download beam. Put your skills to the test as you try to become the fleet's ace pilot!

http://www.giganews.com/games/flame-wars.html

Flame Wars was developed completely in-house as a fun gift for Giganews customers and the entire Usenet community. We are also maintaining a blog post for players to compare their high scores at http://www.giganews.com/blog/2008/01/giganews-flame-wars.html.

The highest score achieved by the Giganews team so far is 198,000, so see if you can top our in-house hotshot and post your score as a comment on the blog post listed above.

Be on the lookout for more exciting announcements from Giganews in the future.

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

The Giganews Accelerator is a Windows based application which enables Giganews account holders to download compressed newsgroup headers and utilize Giganews' encrypted Usenet access services.

In addition to supporting 256-bit SSL encrypted Usenet for Giganews account holders with SSL enabled, the Giganews Accelerator encrypts all authentication and NNTP commands for every customer, regardless of account level. Encrypted authentication solves a long standing security concern with Usenet access accounts, and encrypted NNTP commands will help some customers avoid traffic limitations on networks between Giganews and their computer.

The header compression function of the Giganews Accelerator will allow for header download speeds up to 10 times faster than with uncompressed headers, a feature particularly helpful to Giganews users who utilize news reader software which downloads all new headers in a newsgroup the first time a newsgroup is accessed (Example: Newsbin).

"We're glad to finally be able to offer this product as a final version for our customers. The demand for increased security and faster header download speeds amongst Usenet users has propelled the creation and implementation of technologies, such as the Giganews Accelerator." commented David Vogelpohl, Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Giganews.

Giganews customers wishing to take advantage of 256-bit SSL encrypted Usenet access, encrypted authentication, compressed headers, and encrypted NNTP commands through the Giganews Accelerator can do so by downloading the application at http://www.giganews.com/accelerator. The application is free, but 256-bit SSL encrypted Usenet functionality will require a Giganews SSL enabled account. Encrypted authentication, compressed headers, and NNTP commands are available to every customer regardless of whether 256-bit SSL is enabled on their account.

Download Giganews Accelerator now!

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

This latest upgrade comes just two months after Giganews announced 120 day retention in binary groups and only four months after Giganews announced 100 day retention in binary newsgroups.

"This recent push to 200 days retention fits into our normal cycle of perpetual upgrades. Traditionally we haven't increased retention by as large a margin as we are during this current upgrade; however, we have decided to accelerate our upgrade cycle so that we can continue to lead Usenet and provide more value for our customers. By nearly doubling our storage capacity Giganews is investing in our service so our customers can continue to enjoy the best Usenet experience possible." said David Vogelpohl, Giganews' Vice President of Marketing and Sales.

This retention upgrade follows closely after a series of additional security offerings, utility releases, and other value additions to the Giganews service.

Encrypted Usenet Access

In late 2006, Giganews deployed 256-Bit SSL Encrypted Usenet Access over port 563, which was quickly expanded to offer support over port 443. 256-Bit SSL encryption allows Giganews customers to browse and download headers and articles in a private, secure, and anonymous environment with similar performance they would expect from an unsecured connection. Encrypted Usenet access is included with all Diamond accounts and can be added as an upgrade to all other accounts.

Retention

Thanks to Giganews' recent upgrade, binary article retention will grow from 120 days to 200 days over the coming weeks. Customers will not need to make any configuration changes to enjoy increased retention.

For more information about Giganews, please visit http://www.giganews.com/

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

Less than two months ago, Giganews was the first Usenet provider to hit the century mark for binary retention, but in keeping with a commitment to meet and exceed the expectations of its customers, Giganews has again increased storage capacity which will allow Giganews' Usenet binary retention to grow to 120 days over the next 18 days.

"When we completed our last retention upgrade to 100 days we were pleased, but we wanted to push ourselves to the next level. Giganews is in a perpetual upgrade cycle and this current upgrade is just part of our larger goal of re-investing in our server infrastructure for the benefit of our customers. At Giganews we feel we have a responsibility to push the envelope when it comes to services and features and we hope these efforts will help expand and support the greater Usenet community as a result," said David Vogelpohl, VP of Marketing and Sales at Giganews.

Giganews has been making Usenet history since its inception, by regularly expanding the scale of Usenet retention and offering newsgroup communities more available articles than any other Usenet system. Giganews was also the first Usenet server to provide true broadband download speeds by offering non-rate limited access to its world class Usenet system.

In 2006, Giganews set another Usenet milestone by developing, and then expanding, the use of SSL encryption to help ensure security and anonymity for the Usenet community.

120 Days of retention is a first for Usenet and a significant achievement for Giganews. Increased retention times allow for newsgroup communities to access posts over a longer period of time and through a larger pool of articles. Giganews is proud to offer this first for the Usenet community and is looking forward to further improving its services and features.

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

In September of 2006 Giganews was the fist Usenet provider to offer 90 days binary retention across all binary hierarchies, and followed that announcement with the release of 256 Bit Encrypted Usenet Access .

"As the world's leading premium Usenet provider, Giganews is constantly raising the bar by expanding on existing features such as retention as well as releasing cutting edge technologies such as 256 bit encrypted Usenet access. We feel we have a responsibility to our customers to constantly re-invest in our service so we can continue to offer the best value on Usenet. Our recent storage upgrade and subsequent increase to 100 days retention is just part of this ongoing effort." says Jonah Yokubaitis, Giganews CEO.

In addition to Giganews' upgrade to 100 days retention in binary newsgroups, Giganews continues to retain text articles indefinitely, and the current text retention of 1300+ days grows day by day.

All Giganews accounts will benefit from the storage upgrades and customers will begin to notice the binary newsgroup retention levels grow over the next 2 weeks. There are no configuration changes necessary for Giganews customers to enjoy the new retention levels.

For more information about Giganews, please visit http://www.giganews.com/

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

Port 563 is traditionally recognized as the default port for encrypted Usenet traffic (NNTPS), while port 443 is recognized as the default port for encrypted web traffic (HTTPS). By supporting multiple ports for encrypted Usenet downloads, Giganews' customers will be able to switch between ports depending on which path offers the best performance.

Customers experiencing slow download speeds using port 563 may choose to use port 443 in order to get faster encrypted Usenet downloads and vice versa.

Giganews recently released encrypted Usenet access as announced at http://www.giganews.com/news/article/encrypted-usenet.html. Encrypted Usenet access allows Giganews' customers to safely and securely download headers and articles from Usenet newsgroups.

Encrypted Usenet access and Giganews' new support for port 443 are part of Giganews' continuing efforts to improve service levels and offer a more robust and secure service for their customers.

For more information about Giganews, please visit http://www.giganews.com/

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

Encrypted Usenet access allows Giganews' customers to securely and privately participate in Usenet newsgroups. All data passed from Giganews’ servers to the customer’s computer is encrypted. This includes all username and password data, articles, posts, and headers. For the first time, Giganews’ encrypted Usenet service gives customers security, privacy, and anonymity in a performance rich environment.

Giganews was able to leverage proprietary technology to implement encrypted Usenet access on Giganews’ standard Usenet server environment. All Usenet traffic is encrypted on Giganews’ reader servers and is not passed through a separate encryption server. This allows Giganews to avoid traffic congestion and to maintain extremely high levels of redundancy.

We continue to lead the premium Usenet community through our implementation of in-demand features. Security and privacy are growing concerns among our customers, so developing encrypted Usenet access was part of a natural progression,” said Jonah Yokubaitis, CEO of Giganews.

Encrypted Usenet access will be available to all Giganews customers as an additional service option. Because of the increased bandwidth overhead required to implement encrypted Usenet access, Giganews is also offering an additional 10 concurrent connections to customers who add encrypted Usenet access to their account.

Encrypted Usenet access is the latest in a string of service improvements implemented by Giganews including multilingual websites, additional bonuses for referrals, and retention upgrades to 90 days in binary newsgroups. Frequently asked questions about Giganews’ encrypted Usenet access service can be found at http://www.giganews.com/faq.html.

What is encrypted Usenet access?

Encrypted Usenet access utilizes SSL to encrypt all of the information transmitted between the client and server. Encrypting a connection with SSL significantly decreases the likelihood of identity theft (via a stolen username and password) and other online security concerns. SSL is the same technology used on many web pages that require secure connectivity, such as online stores or Giganews’ own signup page.

For more information on Giganews, please visit http://www.giganews.com/.

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

Atom and RSS feeds, collectively known as web feeds, allow Giganews to distribute news, announcements, and blog posts directly to end customers. Giganews' news and announcements are distributed through the RSS feed found at http://www.giganews.com/press/recent_news.rss. Giganews' blog posts are distributed through the Atom feed found at http://www.giganews.com/blog/feed/atom.xml and the RSS feed found at http://www.giganews.com/blog/feed/rss.xml.

RSS & Atom feeds are commonly read through software known as an RSS/Atom reader. Some popular newsgroup clients also support RSS/Atom feeds, so Giganews' customers will be able to keep up with Giganews' news and announcements using the same software they use to enjoy Giganews' Usenet newsgroup service.

In addition to web feed support, Giganews has also embedded the ability to 'tag' and link interesting content on the Giganews website through popular social bookmarking sites, such as Digg (http://www.digg.com), Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us) and Technorati (http://www.technorati.com). Embedded social bookmarking allows Giganews' customers to easily discuss and share their favorite Giganews content with their peers.

"Web feeds and social bookmarking are increasingly popular methods of keeping up with news and interesting content from all around the web. The feeds on our website are yet another way for us to keep our customers informed of new developments at Giganews," said Jonah Yokubaitis, Giganews CEO.

Updating Giganews' website with the latest in information sharing and distribution technologies was a natural step for Giganews in a busy year of service improvements including multiple binary newsgroup retention upgrades (up to 90 days), text newsgroup retention reaching over 1100 days, and multi-lingual website support.

Read more about RSS / Atom feeds and Social Bookmarking at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss_feed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_%28standard%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking

For more information on Giganews, please visit http://www.giganews.com/

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

Blogs, short for "weblogs", are websites that are structured as diaries or journals and are used to share personal views and advice on subjects of the author's choice. The Giganews blog will offer insight into official company news as well as links to and commentary on the latest happenings around the web. The Giganews blog can be found at http://www.giganews.com/blog.

The addition of a blog to the Giganews site reflects the emphasis placed on serving the Usenet community. Now customers can peek into the company culture at Giganews and interact with employees by commenting on their blog posts. Instead of using a corporate blog as a one-way device to speak to customers, Giganews will use it as a tool for sharing content and promoting dialogue with them.

An official blog is just one of many new service features and improvements Giganews has implemented throughout the past year, including multiple binary and text newsgroup retention upgrades and multi-lingual website mirrors.

For more information about Giganews, please visit http://www.giganews.com/.

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

Thanks to a significant increase in the storage capacity of Giganews’ US and European Usenet clusters Giganews will be able to keep pace with the ever increasing Usenet posting volume.

Typically it is a struggle for a newsgroup provider to simply upgrade storage often enough to keep pace with the growth of Usenet. Giganews has continued to lead by not only keeping pace with Usenet but by constantly raising the bar for the Usenet industry in terms of retention, completion and reliability.

This announcement marks the fifth such storage upgrade at Giganews this year.

"Giganews is dedicated to providing a reliable service that goes above and beyond what users expect from a typical Usenet provider. Keeping up with increasing Usenet traffic is a challenge we face every day. Our strategy has always been to continue to lead the premium Usenet industry with proactive service upgrades such as our latest storage increase." said Jonah Yokubaitis, Giganews CEO.

No configuration changes are necessary for Giganews customers to enjoy the increasing newsgroup retention levels. All binary newsgroups will continue to grow as Giganews’ storage is filled. The end result will be approximately 90 days of retention in the binary Usenet hierarchy.

Because Giganews does not expire articles in text newsgroups, retention of text newsgroups is currently over 1,150 days and grows day by day.

Customers of Giganews can check the retention level of any newsgroup by visiting http://www.giganews.com/newsgroup_search.html

For more information on Giganews, please visit http://www.giganews.com/

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

Traditionally, Giganews customers could refer friends and family by telling their referrals to enter in their Giganews username into the comments section of the Giganews Usenet signup form or by accessing Giganews via a custom URL. Giganews' expanded Usenet referral program allows customers to send referrals to Giganews through Newsgroup related websites and forums via a custom URL and earn an additional $5 credit on their Giganews account for each referral.

"We noticed a lot of our customers evangelizing Giganews in the Usenet community, and we wanted to find a unique way to reward them for the good sentiments." says CEO Jonah Yokubaitis.

Giganews customers wishing to refer friends and family to Giganews through a website or forum may use any of the following URLs:

http://www.giganews.com/?c=your_login (English)
http://fr.giganews.com/?c=your_login (French)
http://de.giganews.com/?c=your_login (German)
http://nl.giganews.com/?c=your_login (Dutch)
http://es.giganews.com/?c=your_login (Spanish)

Replace the "your_login" with your Giganews gn##### login.

As always, Giganews is encouraging its customers to practice good netiquette and to follow the rules of any Usenet forum or website they participate in.

Giganews is continuing to expand its service offerings and customer rewards to improve the overall experience of the Giganews service.

For details on Giganews' expanded Usenet referral program Giganews customers can visit http://www.giganews.com/referral_programs.html.

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners

Giganews is the world's largest tier 1 Newsgroup Service Provider (NSP) offering service to more than 10 million broadband subscribers in 180 countries. With 99%+ completion, 70 days of binary retention, over 1000 days of text retention, and up to 10 connections, Giganews delivers the industry's most popular Usenet service.

With the launch of the new multi-lingual website, Giganews' goal is to reach out to the global Usenet community by offering subscribers the ability to read documentation, view reports, and manage their Usenet accounts in five different languages.

Currently, Giganews will only offer customer support in English, although in the future, this may change.

Customers may view Giganews' new websites at the following URLs:

• Dutch: nl.giganews.com
• German: de.giganews.com
• French: fr.giganews.com
• Spanish: es.giganews.com

"The new translated websites are part of a string of recent service improvements we've been implementing at Giganews," says CEO Jonah Yokubaitis. Giganews recently announced retention upgrades of up to 70 days in binary newsgroups and over 1000 days in text newsgroups.

Further service improvments will be announced in the coming months to boost the company's personal service offerings and increased international presence. Giganews currently operates global Usenet services in North America and Europe.

For more information on Giganews, please visit http://www.giganews.com/.

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners