03-January-2005

Forté has completed an upgrade of its Agent Premium News (APN) servers to increase system reliability and performance for both Measured and Unlimited subscribers. As a result of the upgrades we are able to double the gigabyte download quotas for our Measured Subscribers at no additional cost, and upgrade our 20 GB and 40 GB subscribers to Unlimited accounts.

Additionally, APN unlimited subscribers will benefit from the following improvements:

• Better Performance - message bodies can now be downloaded up to 2x faster
• Improved System Reliability - with our new authentication system, you'll connect on first attempt and you should no longer see 502 or "Too Many Connection" errors
• Longer Retention Rates - binary retention increases from 10 to 14 days and text retention goes from 180 to 300 days

Please note that since we have upgraded to new servers, article numbering has changed for Unlimited service subscribers. This means all Unlimited users will need to reindex their newsgroups list. Please see this FAQ Entry for more details. Additionally as a result of this upgrade, some users may notice a change in the newsgroups offered. Please see this FAQ Entry for more details.

This upgrade of Forte's APN servers is part of our ongoing commitment to provide our customers with a highest quality, lowest cost premium Usenet services.

Regards,

The Forté Team