Tutorial 2: Usenet News
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Contents: What is Usenet Usenet History Usenet Operation The Internet
The FAQs Requirements Posting Summary
What is Usenet? Usenet is a worldwide collection of computers that distribute articles between themselves. Unlike email, in which only the sender and the designated recipients see the articles, on usenet anyone may read any article.

Usenet is divided into groups. Groups have names which are indicative of their intended use, and are arranged into a hierarchy. For example, here are the names of some Amiga groups:

  • comp.sys.amiga.misc
  • comp.sys.amiga.hardware
  • comp.sys.amiga.programmer
  • comp.sys.amiga.graphics

Since group names are a hierarchy, the most general scope is written on the left. In this case, comp indicates that this group deals with computer topics. sys indicates that it deals with a particular type of computer system, amiga indicates that the type of computer system is "amiga", and finally, hardware (for example) indicates that it deals with Amiga hardware.

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Where did Usenet Originate? Usenet was developed in 1979 at the University of North Carolina. It first ran on only 3 machines, and could handle just a few articles per day. From that modest origin it has grown into a worldwide system available in nearly every country in the world, to hundreds of millions of people, that carries 15 gigabytes of information per day, and is steadily growing.

Much of this information is "noise", with little or no valuable content. Separating the noise from the signal becomes increasingly important as the size of usenet continues to increase, and is a task at which NewsRog excels.

How does Usenet Work? This is a much larger and more complex question than can be properly addressed here. Briefly: there are news servers and news clients. News clients are what individual users use to read news articles by connecting to a news server. NewsRog is a news client. It can operate in Online Mode, where you stay connected to a news server, and each article is fetched from the server as you read it, or Offline Mode, where news articles may be downloaded all at once for later offline reading.

Due to the nature of Usenet news, not everyone in the world has the same view of it. Articles you see may not be visible to your friend in Mozambique, and vice versa. There are many reasons for this, but just remember that usenet is a worldwide distributed system.

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Is Usenet the same as the Internet? No. Usenet is carried primarily, but not exclusively, on the internet, but it is only a small segment of the actual internet. And usenet is independent of any particular transport. Usenet news may be propegated via transports as diverse as email and CD-ROM.

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Where can I find Usenet FAQs? Usenet is a vast and complex system, and discussing it in detail is beyond the scope of this documentation. But more information is available in usenet Frequently Asked Questions.

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What do I need to use NewsRog? NewsRog works with NNTP style news servers. To use NewsRog, you must have the hostname or IP address of your NNTP news server. Most ISPs (Internet Service Providers) provide NNTP news service to their customers. Your ISP should have given you this information when you signed up for service. There are also subscription NNTP services available.

In particular NewsRog requires a NNTP Server that follows RFC977 (A Proposed Standard for the Stream-Based Transmission of News) and the Common NNTP Extensions defined in draft-ietf-nntpext-imp-01.txt. Most NNTP news servers in use today follow these specifications.

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Posting Etiquette There are few hard rules, but plenty of guidelines for good behavior. Remember that what you post may be read by thousands, even tens of thousands of people. It is considered good manners to read a group for a while before posting to it. Be polite and concise. Don't post off topic material. Trim quoted text to the minimum necessary for context - many people still pay by the minute for their internet connections. Don't be rude. There is a widely diverse representation of people, cultures, and native languages, and a little tolerance goes a long way. Keep signature files to four or fewer lines. Don't post test messages to discussion groups - there are groups such as alt.test for that purpose.

Above all, certain things are frowned upon and are likely to get your access terminated. Don't post "Make Money Fast" pyramid schemes. Don't post identical or nearly identical material to a huge list of newsgroups. If in doubt, ask someone more knowledgeable before posting.

A few moments spent once to make your post on topic, concise, and readable may save a few moments for ten thousand other people.

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Summary By this point in the tutorial you should understand:

  • What usenet is.
  • Where usenet came from.
  • The difference between news servers and news clients.
  • The difference between usenet and the internet.
  • Where to find more information on usenet.
  • Some simple common posting curtesy, and why it is important.
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