| What is Usenet? Usenet is the original and largest online email discussion service on the Internet. It is also the world's largest distributed database. There are tens of thousands of Usenet Servers all over the world accepting and sharing a single threaded email discussion service for tens of thousands of topics - everything from computer programming to self-help. Some of these messages are also encoded images, videos, mp3s, and software - which makes Usenet a file-sharing network as well. |
What is a newsserver? A Usenet newsserver is a computer on the Usenet network (usually located at an ISP) which collects messages from other Usenet servers and makes these group messages viewable to end users with a newsreader over a protocol called NNTP. Just as a webserver serves web pages to users with browsers like Internet Explorer, and an email server serves email to end users with email clients Like Eudora, Newsservers serve Usenet news messages to users with Newsreaders like Forte FreeAgent. |
What is a newsreader? A Usenet newsreader is PC software or, increasingly, a web site which allows you to browse Usenet messages from a Usenet newsserver. Google Groups is the prime example of an online Usenet newsreader. It is also the most complete archive of Usenet text messages known to exist. However, Google Groups does not provide access to Usenet binaries such as images or video. Some examples of PC-based newsreaders would include Forte FreeAgent and NewsRover. The problem with PC-based newsreaders is that you must have them installed on every computer you use for Usenet access, and browsing and decoding binaries is much more awkward and time-consuming then a website which has already decoded, thumbnailed, and indexed all the binaries and simply allows you to browse thumbnails. Web-based newsreaders usually also provide advanced search capabilities across all binaries on the server, which a PC-based newsreader cannot do. All newsreaders mentioned have both free and paid services/products, with the exception of Google Groups, which is always free. MP3 and full movies are often posted to the Usenet as well, although the selection of MP3's is negligible compared to most any file-sharing service such as Kazaa, and movies are extremely time consuming to find all the parts, download, and decode, and you don't know until you have finished the process whether what you downloaded was a decent copy of the movie you wanted, or a horrible recording made by a camcorder in a theatre, or wasn't even the movie you wanted in the first place. Software is also posted to the Usenet, but running executables posted on the Usenet is a great way to introduce a virus, Trojan, or Spyware on your computer, so beware. |
What is NNTP? NNTP, or Network News Transfer Protocol, is the protocol which communicates Usenet email messages between Usenet Servers and Usenet Newsreaders, and is defined in RFC 977. Just like SMTP and POP are protocols for sending and delivering mail, and HTTP is a protocol for requesting and receiving web pages, NNTP is the protocol for requesting and sending Usenet news messages. |
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service providers What are Usenet Binaries? At some point in the history of the Usenet, someone wanted to send files besides text to the groups, just as you would attach a picture to an email message you sent a friend. Since Usenet messages do not support attachments, people started to use programs to convert their binary data like images, videos, and software into one or more text emails, by using a known binary-to-text encoding algorithm such as Base-64 or yEnc encoding. Users who viewed the messages could then use software to decode them back into their original binary form, and view the image or video. Since the only way to browse Usenet binaries such as images and videos from a PC newsreader is by either reading subject descriptions or downloading an entire group in a batch, an online binary Usenet web newsreader such as UsenetBinaries.com is usually preferred, especially if the user does not already have free access to a Usenet newsserver. This also absolves the overhead of decoding and reasssembling multiple files. |
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service providers What is yEnc? In 2002 some controversy started to heat up on the Usenet over the defacto adoption of a new binary encoding algorythm known as yEnc. Because of the massive compression benefits of yEnc for posters of Usenet binaries and newsservers worldwide, which are frequently overwhelmed with the monthly increase in binary traffic, yEnc has now become the default method for encoding binaries on the Internet. More information about yEnc can be found at yEnc.org. In general, the argument is that although it has less overhead, the Internet community never adopted a standard for yEnc which incorporates several very nice features to make it a solid standard, so implementing and evolving it will be messier then it could have been. However, considering the tremendous costs involved with Usenet traffic (a Usenet server can easily cost upwards of $40k a year to operate), it probably wouldn't have been a practical idea for any individual posting user or Usenet administrator to wait until that happened. |