Usenet¶

Configure NNTP providers, connection budgets, cascade vs pooled routing, and queue-side NNTP pipelining.

Providers¶

Add one or more accounts. Each provider supports:

Persisted as usenet.providers JSON.

Data-cap accounting since 1.5.0¶

Data-cap usage counts the raw NNTP BODY payload received from the provider, including yEnc headers, trailers, and bodies drained after an early close or cancellation. NNTP command/status traffic and the terminating dot line are excluded. The counter is independent of Overview statistics and analytics retention, and a reset takes effect at the configured instant. On the first startup after upgrading, InfiniDysk preserves the legacy displayed value; all traffic received after that uses exact accounting.

Back up /config before upgrading; the metrics migration applies automatically at startup.

Connection budgets since 1.3.0¶

Provider Connection Limit is the absolute number of connections InfiniDysk may use for the provider account. Set it no higher than the provider allows, or lower when the account is shared with another client.

Transfer Connections limits article-body traffic independently. Once it is set, InfiniDysk uses the rest of the provider budget for lightweight metadata commands such as STAT, HEAD, and DATE. The editor previews Metadata Capacity from the configured values; after saving, provider cards use the current effective provider limit when live runtime data is available. The runtime range is calculated as follows:

P = effective Provider Connection Limit
T = min(configured Transfer Connections, P)

base metadata = P - T
maximum metadata = min(P, max(1, base metadata + floor(T / 2)))
metadata burst = maximum metadata - base metadata
metadata capacity = base metadata through maximum metadata

For example:

Transfers never exceed their hard cap, and all work combined never exceeds the effective provider limit. Metadata may borrow only the displayed burst allowance while transfer capacity is idle. If transfers begin waiting, currently running metadata commands finish normally; their released slots normally return to transfers first. Under a sustained transfer backlog, one metadata waiter is admitted after at most eight consecutive transfer grants so health and control work cannot starve.

Auto-tune finds the transfer-throughput knee and applies its recommendation only to Transfer Connections. It progressively adds connection levels, including above 50 when configured, and stops after throughput reaches a stable knee, the provider refuses more connections, or the data budget is exhausted. It never rewrites or probes above Provider Connection Limit. Releases before 1.3.0 could sweep above the saved connection count; raise Provider Connection Limit first if you want Auto-tune to test a higher count. When the result says speed was still climbing at the ceiling, the provider may benefit from a higher limit if the account permits it. If the provider later refuses its configured ceiling, InfiniDysk lowers the effective runtime limit without changing either saved value; provider cards and metrics then show capacities based on that learned limit.

Invalid provider certificates since 0.9.0¶

Leave Skip TLS certificate verification disabled unless a trusted provider has a certificate it cannot correct. It keeps the NNTP connection encrypted but accepts an untrusted, expired, or hostname-mismatched certificate. This permits a man-in-the-middle attacker to impersonate the provider and read credentials.

Routing and pipelining¶

Legacy keys usenet.pipelining.enabled / usenet.pipelining.depth remain honored; env vars use NZBDAV_CONFIG__USENET__QUEUE_PIPELINING__* for the new names.

Run Auto-tune before enabling queue pipelining. WebDAV streaming batching is a separate toggle on Streaming.

Global download cap since 1.3.0¶

usenet.bandwidth-limit-mbps (Streaming settings) caps total live Usenet payload ingress from every provider, in megabits per second. Queue downloads and WebDAV streaming share the cap. Cache hits, LAN delivery, and the provider speed benchmark are not limited. Empty or 0 means unlimited; the value reloads without restart. 1 MB/s = 8 Mbit/s. The cap cannot make a latency-limited provider faster.

See NNTP pipelining and Multi-provider.

Warm connections since 1.2.0¶

Each pooled provider keeps a small floor of pre-connected, authenticated NNTP sockets ready so playback and queue work skip the connect/TLS/login handshake after idle periods. Warm sockets count against the provider's connection limit but never hold download permits. See Connection warming for the mechanics and the header indicator.

Changes take effect on the next provider save or restart — connection pools are not rebuilt when these keys change alone.

Article-miss negative cache since 0.9.0¶

After a provider (or storage group) reports a definitive article miss (NNTP 430 or provider 451), InfiniDysk remembers that miss so later streaming/batch reads skip re-probing the same provider for the same article until the TTL expires. Transient failures (timeouts, network, corrupt articles) are never cached.

The cache clears automatically when Usenet providers are reconfigured.

Provider circuit-breaker cooldown since 1.3.0¶

When a provider's circuit trips, that provider is skipped for a cooldown and traffic goes to the remaining providers. Each consecutive trip doubles the cooldown up to a ceiling. A successful article body resets it to the initial value.

Lower the initial cooldown when a single pool provider carries the traffic and the backups are metered blocks. A brief wobble then spends fewer backup bytes before the primary is re-probed. A maximum below the initial value is raised to it. The connection pools read both values when they are built, so a change applies on the next restart or provider save. Neither has a Settings control. Set them through config or the environment.

Once the cooldown lapses, one request is admitted as a half-open probe. If that request is abandoned before it returns an outcome, the probe slot stays claimed for up to 60 seconds before another request can retake it. A cooldown shorter than that will not always re-probe as quickly as the number suggests.