Usenet FAQ

What are Newsgroups?
Newsgroups are a hierarchal group of online discussion forums read through software called a news client.

What is a News Client?
A News Client or News Reader is software used to download Newsgroups. The most common News Client is Outlook Express; however, there are many software packages available which do a much better job at handling binary downloads. For a list of News Clients / News Readers please check out the Newsreaders section on the menu bar of this site.

What is Usenet?
Usenet is a world wide network of servers exchanging newsgroup articles.

What are binaries?
Usenet was traditionally used to exchange discussion type articles in a forum based format. Over time uuencoding was developed to turn a file like an Mpg, etc. into a set of characters which can be uploaded to Usenet, downloaded by other users, and then decoded. Binary articles are articles on Usenet which contain uuencoded files.

How can I access newsgroups?
Traditionally your ISP will provide newsgroup access as a standard part of their service (similar to email). You can generally connect to your ISP’s news server using news.domain.com (domain being your ISP’s domain). Most ISPs these days run very poor news servers with retention times of a couple of days and scores of missing articles. If you’re planning on extensively using newsgroups you’d be better served to use one of the premium Newsgroup Service Providers reviewed on this site. For instructions on downloading newsgroups using various news clients please visit the Tutorials section of this site.

How can I search newsgroups?
There are two types of searches you can do on newsgroups. You can search to see if a specific newsgroup is carried on the server you’re looking for. This can be done with your news client or on your provider’s website as seen here (http://www.giganews.com/newsgroup_search.html).
You may also want to search for specific articles within newsgroups. News clients like Newsrover offer you the ability to search for specific keywords within the header information of the articles on Usenet to help locate a specific article containing specific content.

Doesn’t my ISP offer free newsgroup access? Why should I pay?
Most ISPs these days run very poor news servers with retention times of a couple of days and scores of missing articles. If you’re planning on extensively using newsgroups you’d be better served to use one of the premium Newsgroup Service Providers reviewed on this site. Premium Newsgroup Service Providers can offer up to 60 days of binary retention and 99%+ completion. These service levels are usually leaps and bounds above the average ISP's news servers.

What is a concurrent connection?
A concurrent connection refers to the number of streams you can open up at any one time to a news server. Most servers limit the number of connections to help control the speed at which you can connect. If you find a server with a high limit on the number of connections you may be able to download at a faster rate.

What is retention and why is it important?
Retention refers to the number of days newsgroup articles are stored on the server. Long retention times allow you to choose from more articles when downloading from Usenet.

What is completion and why is it important?
Completion refers to the percentage of articles a newsgroup server has out of the number of articles it was fed. For example if a news server takes in 1,000,000 articles a day and loses 100,000 a day that server is said to have a 90% completion rate. Obviously the more articles a server loses the harder it will be for you to find what you're looking for.

How can I find information on a particular newsgroup?
One way is to read the Usenet Newsgroup Charter/FAQ for the Newsgroup in question. Written by members of that particular Newsgroup, the charter explains the purpose of the Newsgroup, what discussion topics are available and whether the Newsgroup is moderated or not. A good resource for Usenet Newsgroup Charters or FAQs is UsenetFAQGuides.

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