I just read your post and remember reading a post in the General Talk earlier with this same thing, or at least basically the same thing.
Here's the response from It's_Me:)
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However, I found out how one can reliably connect to usenet-news.net. Simply add ssl.usenet-news.net as three different servers, one on port 443, one on port 563 and one on port 8080. Then the connect problems are gone. I would have added that to
http://www.altbinz.com/forum/index.php?topic=1392.0 but the thread is locked.
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Maybe that will help you out a little....