Complete Beginners Guide to Usenet

Any comments or questions to any of the guides or tutorials here in the Newsgroup sections, should be made in the Newsgroup discussion area.

This post has been edited by yourmercifulgod: Jun 5 2008, 05:03 PM

A Complete Beginners Guide To Downloading From Newsgroups

This Tutorial is designed for the absolute novice, and is written in such a way as to help the reader gain some understanding of newsgroups, how to access them, and how to download files from a news server.

Before we start, I’m going to assume that you, the reader, know absolutely nothing about newsgroups. If this is the case, then I recommend you read the Newsgroup FAQ in conjunction with this tutorial.

Newsgroups (also known as Usenet) are an incredible source of both information and fully downloadable files, such as XviD’s, DVD’s, MP3’s, and just about every other kind of tradable file you can think of. On top of all this, Newsgroups have been around since long before P2P or even the modern Internet as we know it today.

Regardless of their longevity, Newsgroups have largely remained a mystery to most Internet users, despite the many advantages they have over the more conventional types of file-sharing protocols.

Lightening fast downloads that will often max-out your connection, and absolute anonymity from media groups such as the RIAA and MPAA, are just two reasons why newsgroups have outlasted almost every other form of file-sharing, and will likely continue to do so.

Of course, as with all good things, there are some drawbacks. Newsgroup downloading is not as simple as other file-sharing technologies, and that is why this tutorial aims to take it from the very beginning, and guide you through your first Usenet hurdles.

Another reason why Usenet has not gained the popularity of other file-sharing technologies, is that to make the most of Newsgroups, users need to have either an ISP that offers free or bundled access to news servers, or pay a small fee to subscribe to third party server providers… Many, if not most Western ISP’s these days provide at least limited access for their customers to their own news servers.

Before subscribing to a third party news server, you should check whether or not your own ISP bundles Usenet access with your connection.

For those that don’t, or for those that wish to supplement their own ISP’s Usenet access with additional servers, you should check out the list of providers in the "Newsgroup providers" section… Many offer a free three day trial

Right, on with the tutorial.

In order to access Newsgroups, you are going to need a client (also known as a news reader). In this Tutorial we’re going to be using a client called NewsLeecher, which is one of the more popular clients on the market. You don’t have to use NewsLeecher, there are many other clients out there, and some are free to use. Most have similar functionality, and once you become skilled in one, the others will be readily understandable to you. For the time being, I recommend you use NewsLeecher’s free trial version as it will make the tutorial easier to follow.
You can download the trial version of NewsLeecher here:

http://www.newsleecher.com/

Another application that you will need for this tutorial is a free programme called QuickPar. I’ll explain all about its function later in the tutorial, but for now, you can download a copy here:

http://www.quickpar.org.uk/

Once you have installed QuickPar, open it up and click on the "options" button near the bottom of the window. Check the screenshot below, and make sure that the configuration is the same as yours

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Once you have the configuration the same, click the OK button and close down QuickPar.

If you don’t have WinRar installed on your computer, I suggest you get that too, as you will need it to unzip the files that you download… most files of likely interest on Newsgroups are archived in the RAR format. You can get WinRar here:

http://www.rarlab.com/

Once you have installed NewsLeecher, open it up into the mainscreen shown below

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The first thing we’re going to do is set up our news server connection, and we do this by selecting the "Add" button, as indicated above.

The server setup window shown below will open

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At this point, we need to have a news server to connect to. You should check out the "Newsgroup providers" section to find links to the main providers, many of whom will offer a three day free trial. You should also contact your ISP to confirm if they provide any free Usenet access. In either case, you will be provided with a server address to type into the "Server Address" window, shown above (it will most likely be along the lines of – news.serviceprovider.com).

Set your connections to 4 in the pulldown as this is a common number which most news servers will allow.

If it is your ISP’s news server, you will not usually need to enter anything in the "Server Login Details" section, as your connection will be verified automatically based on your IP number.

If you have signed up to a third party Usenet service provider’s free trial, then they will have sent you (along with the server address) your username and password. Check the "Server Requires Login" box and enter the Username and Password that you have been supplied with.

When you’re done click the "OK" button to return to the NewsLeecher main screen.

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As you can see in the above screenshot, the server details in the top left window section now show the server we have just set up. The bottom right window section should show the status of each of the four connections that we set up for that server. (These connections are commonly know as bots) By the way, in my example above, I have ten bots, instead of the four you will have… This is because I know my service provider allows this many. For now, we’ll stick with four for you to keep things nice and simple.

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As shown in the screen shot above, click the "connect" button at the top left, to bring the bots into standby mode.

Now click the button marked "Fetch Entire Group List"

Now, a little bit about groups

Usenet is full of "groups" and a good server will list (or carry) most of the big ones and many of the smaller ones too. A group is a little bit like a normal forum thread, except much bigger, and a lot less organised. Some groups contain binary files (which are the files which contain things like movies, pictures and music) and some just contain text files (which are a bit like the posts in a forum thread) while others contain both.

When you tell your client to fetch the entire group list, you are telling it to connect to the news server and report back which groups it carries.

If you haven’t already, do that now.

Once your client has finished fetching the group list, it will display them for you. NewsLeecher displays all the available groups in the top right window section. Scroll through them until you find a binaries group that interests you. The contents are described in the name… For example "alt.binaries.divx" will be a group which contains binary files mostly consisting of DivX movies.

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When you have found a group which interests you, highlight it by giving it a single left-click and then click the "subscribe" button indicated above.

You have now "subscribed" to that group. Subscribing to a group doesn’t have any action on the server, like joining a forum on the Internet does, it merely tells your client that this is a group you are interested in… Servers often list hundreds of groups, and subscribing to a few of the ones that interest you, allows you to weed out all the ones that don’t, making the job of finding what you want a lot easier.

Clicking on the "back" button to the left of the subscribe button will toggle between the window displaying all the groups on the server, and the ones you have subscribed to.

Subscribing to groups of interest is common to pretty much every news client on the market, not just NewsLeecher. Whichever client you choose to use, it will have very similar functionality with regards to groups. The way in which you control them will, of course, vary from client to client, but understanding the process is more important than figuring out which buttons you need to press.

Click on the back button now, so that the window displays your subscribed groups

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When you have toggled to your subscribed groups, select one of the groups, and right-click to open the context menu, as shown above.

In the context menu, select "Update > Start Update (Selected)"

Your client will now connect one of the bots to the server and collect the "headers" for the group you have selected…. Go and put the kettle on.

While you’re drinking your cocoa and your client is updating the headers, let’s talk a little bit about what headers are and what they do.

Each group (particularly the big ones like alt.binaries.boneless) contain thousands or tens of thousands of files, some of them between 50 and 100 MB each. It would be impractical to download the whole content of the group, just so you can see what is in it. Instead, you just download the headers to the files. Headers are like little segments of the files which contain information on the main files themselves… Information like the name and size of the file, for example.

Updating the headers, allows us to see what has been posted in that particular group without having to download each file.

In big groups, the update can take quite some time and use up quite a bit of bandwidth, particularly so if it is the first time you have updated the headers, or you haven’t updated them for quite some time… you may want to consider updating all your subscribed big groups overnight.

In my example screenshot above, I have more than thirteen subscribed groups, and updating them all can take hours, so be warned.
Once your group has finished updating, click the connect button at the top left to disconnect your bots, and then we’ll take a look at what’s in the group.

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Click the "articles" tab at the top, as indicated above, and then click the group you have just updated in the left hand window. The right hand window will then display all the headers for that group.

Like most windows applications, they can be sorted according to preference by clicking the subject column tab at the top of the window (or the size, date etc).

Most large binary files like movies etc will have been split-up into numerous RAR files (XviD’s usually into several 10 or 15 MB files – DVD’s usually into 50 MB files)… The reasons for this are quite complicated, but date back to the early days of Usenet and the present method of transferring files from server to server.

In order to download the full movie, you will need to identify every RAR file that it is split into… This is actually easier than it may seem. Scroll down until you find a series of files that you find interesting (In my example it is "Time Cop") If they are all together, then it is simply a matter of highlighting the first one with a single left-click, scrolling down, and , while holding the shift key, highlight the last one in the same way… All the files between will now be highlighted too.

If the files are spread out, you can use the handy little filter option at the top of the right-hand window… Type in a portion of the file name, and all the unrelated headers will disappear, leaving you with just the ones you need. Now you can easily select them all in the same way as above.

Make sure that you highlight all the files including any that are labelled "PAR2" at the end… These are the parity files that I’ll come to shortly.

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Hovering your pointer over the highlighted block, right click to open the context menu (as shown above) and select "Leech > Leech (specify)"

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This bit is self explanatory, and you should specify where you want your files downloading to. In my example they will be downloaded to a folder with the path G:\Downloading Dump\time cop.

Click "OK" once you have specified your destination folder and return to the NewsLeecher main screen.

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Select the "Queue" tab at the top (as shown above) to take you to the queue window.

This window is the part of the client that shows you what you are either downloading, or are what you are about to download. If you look at the two arrows on the right, you will see that some of the files are "paused" while some are "queued" This is because NewsLeecher, by default, automatically pauses Parity files for later download, if you need them.

Before we start downloading the files, we’ll talk about these Parity files (or Par files) and what they do.

In order to understand Parity files, we have to understand a little bit about how binary files are stored and transferred over the various news servers around the world.

As we discovered earlier, large binary files, such as DVD’s, XviD’s etc, are split into multiple RAR files before being uploaded to news servers. These RAR files are in turn made up of a certain number of "blocks." Once uploaded to a news server, all these files are distributed among all the other news servers around the world, by the various servers constantly "talking" to each other and passing files backwards and forwards.

As you can imagine, all this data transferal can cause some data loss. This means, that when you come to download a set of RAR files, some of them may be missing altogether, or have missing blocks.

This means, that it is impossible to un-RAR the files back into their original XviD/DVD format… As data loss is quite common, this poses quite a bit of a problem for people wishing to share large files via news servers… and this is where Parity sets make an entrance.

Parity sets are kind of like puncture repair kits for RAR files. A parity set is created specifically for the set of RAR files when the uploader creates his split volume. They contain a certain percentage of blocks that can be used to fill the holes left by data loss in the main RAR files.

For example: Say you are downloading a set of 10 RAR files each containing 30 blocks of data. One of the RAR files is missing altogether and two of the others each have 5 missing blocks. This means that you are short 40 blocks of data that you need to make the file complete (30+5+5=40). In other words, the complete set of files should have 300 blocks of data, but you only have 260 blocks.

Parity files contain blocks that can be used to plug these data holes. A parity set usually contains a number of "PAR2" files which start of small (containing just one block of data) and increase in size until they are about the same size as one of the RAR files. A good Parity set can contain enough blocks to repair a RAR volume that is missing 15% of its data.

Now that we understand what PAR files do, we have to learn how to use them, and for that we’re going to use QuickPar. For the time being, we’re just going to use QuickPar to monitor the RAR files as they are being downloaded. For that to happen, we have to download one of the PAR2 files that are presently set to "paused" in our queue.

Find the smallest PAR2 file in your queue and use the right-click menu to unpause it and move it to the top of the queue, so that it will be the first file we download when we hit the connect button in a moment.

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When you’re ready, select the "Connect" button at the top left to start your download. As you can see in the screenshot above, your bots will connect to your server, enter the group, and start downloading all the unpaused files in the queue.

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Click on the "Explorer" tab as indicated by the top arrow in the above picture. Now browse to your download folder as indicated by the middle arrow, and select your subfolder in the window. Once you’re in your download folder, find the PAR2 file and double click on it to open QuickPar.

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QuickPar should already be set up to monitor the download, but if it isn’t check the box indicated above.

As you can see, QuickPar is showing in its main window which files have been downloaded and their status (it will either be complete, missing, or x number of blocks out of x).

The progress bar at the bottom, will tell you how many blocks remain to be downloaded.

Let the download continue, and QuickPar will carry on monitoring it and updating itself as it progresses.

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When your RAR files have finished downloading, the bottom bar will hopefully read "Repair not needed" (as above) In which case you have successfully downloaded your first full file volume from a newsgroup. You can now close QuickPar, browse to your download folder and unRAR your movie/file by right-clicking on the first RAR file and selecting "Unrar"

If you are missing blocks (or even complete RAR files) when your download is complete, the bottom bar will tell you how many blocks you are short by… Go back to your Queue window and unpause some of the PAR2 files. As each one downloads, QuickPar will count down the number of blocks it still needs to repair the volume.

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When you have downloaded a sufficient amount of PAR2 files, the bottom bar will read "Ready to repair using x/x recovery blocks" as shown in the screenshot above. Check the "AutoRepair" box and QuickPar will repair your volume by filling in the missing blocks with blocks from the PAR2 files.

And that’s it… All you have to do now is browse to your download folder and unrar your volume in the usual way.

To summarise, we have covered all of the following:

• Set up a server connection to a newsgroup service provider
• Fetch the group list from our news server
• Subscribe to a binary newsgroup
• Download/update the headers for our subscribed group
• Identify and select files for download
• Download a split RAR volume
• Understand Parity sets
• Use QuickPar to monitor/fix incomplete volumes with PAR2 files

There is, of course, an easier way of identifying and grabbing split RAR volumes without having to update headers and search for all the files and parity sets. This easy option is achieved with something called an NZB file, which will be dealt with next. .

NZB’s can be thought of like the torrent files of newsgroups… instead of pointing your news client to a tracker and other peers with the files you want (like a torrent file does) they point it to the news server and binary group, and then it loads all the files needed for the volume into your download queue.

This is a really handy way of grabbing files from Usenet. Not only does it save you time and bandwidth updating your headers, it ensures you have loaded all the required files into your download queue without having to trawl through all the headers.

Of course, it also has the added benefit of being ideal for web based listings, much like torrent listing sites, and so making it easier to browse for content on newsgroups.

All you need to take advantage of NZB’s is a news client capable of handling them correctly. Fortunately for us, the client we are using in this tutorial has such functionality.

Open NewsLeecher, and click on the "Options" menu at the top

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Select "NZB Files" in the left hand window, as shown above. Make sure the two check boxes are ticked as they are in the screenshot. Click "OK"

Your client is now set-up to handle NZB’s.

To take advantage of NZB functionality, simply find an NZB file, and download it to your desktop, as you would a torrent file.

Double click on the downloaded NZB and NewsLeecher will automatically open and load all the files into your download queue.

And that’s it… You’re ready to download in the usual way as described further up in this tutorial.

How To Post To Binary Newsgroups

This tutorial is designed to teach you how to post large binary files such as movies, CD’s, DVD’s etc to binary newsgroups.

To use the tutorial, you will need three applications:

WinRar… Available from the link below. If you don’t already have WinRar installed, please download and install it now

http://www.download.com/WinRAR/3000-2250_4...tml?tag=lst-0-1

QuickPar… Available from the link below. If you don’t already have QuickPar installed, please download and install it now

http://www.quickpar.org.uk/Download.htm

And finally, YencPowerPost… Available as an attachment at the bottom of this tutorial. YencPowerPost doesn’t require any installation, just un-RAR it to a folder in a suitable place on your computer and it’s ready to use. Please download and un-RAR YencPowerPost now.

The first thing we’re going to do, is create a folder on our hard drive called “Posting”

Within this folder, we’re going to create a sub folder and name it with the same name as the main file we’ll be uploading. For example, if you intend to upload a 2CD XviD called “The Best Film Ever” name your sub folder “The Best Film Ever – 2CD XviD”

In this tutorial, I’ll simply be calling my folder “Example File” as you can see in the screenshot below

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Inside this sub folder, you put the main files you’ll be uploading, such as both of the XviD files (The Best Film Ever CD1 and The Best Film Ever CD2 – for example) or a DVD disk image or VIDEO_TS file, or several MP3’s that make up an album etc, along with any additional stuff you want to include like cover pictures etc etc.

In my example, I’ve simply thrown in a 590 MB exe file (a bit of freeware) to bulk it out for demonstration purposes, but your sub folder should contain all of the files that you intend to upload.

Once all your files are in the sub folder, right-click the folder with your mouse and select “Add to archive…” in the context menu that opens, so that we can RAR the folder, ready for upload.

When you select “Add to archive…” WinRar will open as in the screenshot below

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Select “Store” in the “Compression method” pulldown

Check the “Test Archive files” tick-box

Change the “Split to volumes, bytes” from “none” to one of the following figures, based on the total size of the file/files (IE the size of the subfolder containing all your files) that you intend to upload:

• If your file is over 5GB… Set the value to 100,000,000
• If your file is between 1.5GB and 5 GB… Set the value to 50,000,000
• If your file is between 100MB and 1.5GB… Set the value 15,000,000
• If your file is under 100MB leave it set to “none”

When you’re done, click the “OK” button.

As in the screenshot below, WinRar will now start to archive your folder and split it into chunks of the size you specified above.

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When WinRar has finished, browse to your “Posting” folder to check everything went well. As you can see in the screenshot below, my “Posting” folder now contains the split volume I’ve just created, made up of many 15MB RAR files

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OK, now open QuickPar by double clicking on it’s icon

When it loads, select the “Add Files” button, as indicated below in the screenshot.

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You now have to select all of the RAR files in the split volume we’ve just created. To do this, select the first RAR file and hold down the shift key. Now select the last RAR file (while still holding the shift key). This will select all of the RAR files simultaneously as shown in the screenshot below

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Make sure that you have selected all of the RAR files (NB… Do not select the original folder… Just the RAR files) as in the screenshot above. When you’re done, click the “Open” button.

Back in the QuickPar mainscreen, adjust the “Number Of Recovery Blocks” figure up or down, until the percentage figure above it reads either 10% or 15% as indicated in the screenshot below. When The redundancy figure is at 10% or 15%, click the create button.

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QuickPar will then start creating the Parity (PAR2) set for your split volume, as seen in the screenshot below.

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When QuickPar finishes creating the Parity Set, click on the “verify” button, then (once it’s verified) the “exit” button.

Browse to your “Posting” folder to check that everything went well. As you can see in the screenshot below, I now have the RAR files and the newly created PAR2 Parity files in my “Posting” folder.

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We now have our file, split into multiple parts, and our PAR2 parity set, both in the normal and useable format of binary newsgroups.

We’re now ready to make our post.

Browse to the folder where you downloaded YencPowerPost to, and double click on the YencPowerPost Icon to open the application.

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In the mainscreen, click on the “setup” button, as indicated in the screenshot above, to open the Properties window.

Type in your news server details, password, username etc and set the number of connections to around four or five. Set the max bandwidth figure to “0” for unlimited or whatever figure you want the upload capped at in KB/s.

Now click on the “Headers” tab and type in your desired posting nickname, and an Email address… Unless you have a dedicated spam collecting addy, I would suggest using a fake Email something like no@spam.com. Leave the other fields blank.

Now select the “Newsgroups” tab

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Click on the “Add” button then type in the name of the newsgroup you intend to post to. For example alt.binaries.movies.divx then click “OK” and then “Apply”

Back in the YencPowerPost mainscreen, click on the “Add Files” button as indicated in the screenshot below.

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Make sure that you select all of the RAR files and PAR2 files in your “Posting” folder, again, by selecting the first file, holding down the shift key, and selecting the last file (once again, make sure that you get all the RAR and PAR2 files, and not the original folder we created the RAR files from)… When you’ve selected all the RAR and PAR2 files, click the “Open” button.

The “Add Files” window, shown below, will open

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As above, type in the following:

(????) [$1/$2] - "$F" yEnc

Instead of the ???? between the brackets, you can put a small comment if you wish.

Now select the “Newsgroups” tab at the top

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Tick the box of the Newsgroup or groups that you want to upload to as indicated in the screenshot above. As I’ll be uploading a junk file for demonstration purposes, I’ll be uploading to my news server’s binary test group “alt.binaries.usenetserver.testing”

Now click the “Cheksums” tab at the top

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In the Checksums box (shown above) check the tick-box to Generate an NZB file.

Now click the “OK” button… You may get a warning box at this point advising you of any possible problems, such as “No subject line change” etc. don’t worry about it just continue on.

Back in the YencPowerPost mainscreen, you will see that the files are all labelled, numbered, queued and ready to go

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Click the “Post” button indicated above.

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YencPowerPost will now connect to your server, enter your specified newsgroup, and begin uploading the files. As you can see from the above screenshot, YencPowerPost has opened four connections to my news server and is posting the files to my specified newsgroups.

You can close this window now (you can reopen it at any time, by selecting the “Posting Progress” button in the YencPowerPost main screen)

Check the YencPowerPost main screen (below)

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On the right you can see the post results… The first two files in my example queue have posted OK, and the next four are in progress (being posted) in their respective threads (4 connections = 4 threads)

On the Left, you can see the status icons which will either be:

• “OK” meaning that file has been posted
• “P” meaning the file is being posted
• “Q” meaning the file is queued and waiting to be posted

And that’s all there is to it. Just leave YencPowerPost to finish doing its thing, and you will have successfully uploaded your first file to a binary newsgroup.

==========================

As Promised at the start of the tutorial, below is the YencPowerPost attachment

 YencPowerPostA_A11b.zip ( 146.25K ) Number of downloads: 30


This post has been edited by yourmercifulgod: Jan 23 2008, 12:09 PM

Newsgroups - An introductory FAQ to Usenet

What are newsgroups?

Newsgroups were initially a way for people of a like mind to communicate with each other before the days of Internet chat rooms and forums. They soon developed into a way for sharing, not just ideas and news, but binary files such as music, pictures, and now even whole movies.

How does it work?

Usenet servers exist all over the world, and talk to each other all the time. When one user posts a file in a newsgroup on a particular news server, that server passes the file on to its “peer servers” who in turn pass it on to their own peer servers and so on until the file exists on many news servers around the world… This process is called propagation, and it allows users to download files that were not uploaded directly to the server they are connected to.


So, what exactly is a newsgroup?

Try and think of a newsgroup as an individual little corner of the Usenet containing a themed or similar content, which exists (or is mirrored) on many servers, and you’ll be somewhere close to understanding what a newsgroup is.


What is the difference between Usenet and Newsgroups?

Usenet is regarded as being the collection of global servers upon which Newsgroups reside, although today many people use both to describe the same thing.

How do I access newsgroups?

You need two things… First you need an application called a newsreader, and second, you need a connection to a news server. There are many news readers available and many are free or offer free trials. Server connections can be obtained either free through your ISP or via a paid-for subscription to one of many News servers.


I’ve often heard people use the abbreviations NNTP and UUCP. What do these stand for?

NNTP and UUCP are the protocols, or language, of Usenet. In the old days it used to be UUCP (UNIX-to-UNIX Copy) but nowadays it is NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol)

So who owns the Usenet?

Nobody… Many organisations and companies own the actual servers around the world, but their control of the whole Usenet is limited to mundane decisions such as who can access their own server, which groups they carry, how much space is reserved for data etc. Once information is passed onto a peer server, their control of these things ends.

Why is all the good stuff split up into smaller RAR files?

Usenet was initially designed for the distribution of text messages and not large binary files, and as such had size limitations. The introduction of binary mapping technology with such things as Uuencode, and later yEnc, eventually enabled binary files to be passed over the network. These mapping technologies are only workarounds, though, so very large files still need to be broken down into smaller units.

What is binary mapping?

Put simply, binary mapping is a way in which binary files are converted into text so that they can be passed over the network


What is this “completion” that I keep hearing about?

Completion is basically how much complete data makes it onto a particular news server. When binary files are mapped and sent across the Usenet, some data may get lost (and so the whole file can said to be incomplete.) Incomplete files are useless, unless you can fix the holes with parity data. A news server that has good links to the Usenet backbone will have better completion rates, than one on the fringes with poor peerage, thus making it easier for users to get complete files without having to resort to downloading parity files.

What is a parity, or PAR2 file?

A PAR2 file (or Parity file) is a kind of repair kit for files with missing data. When an uploader creates his split volume of RAR files, he often also creates a parity set. This parity set usually equals about 10 or 15 percent the size of the whole volume of RAR files. This builds-in a certain amount of redundancy, meaning that even if you have 10 or 15 percent of your data lost, you can probably still fix it and successfully retrieve the file.

What is retention, and what do retention rates mean?

Each news server only has a limited amount of space to store all this data… This is called retention. As new data arrives from peer servers, the news server begins to prune older files to make room for the new ones. Retention rates are how long the news server can keep old files before it has to start dumping them in favour of the new ones. Poor retention rates are usually classed as under 14 days, while good retention rates are usually thought of as being in the 100 days to 400 days bracket.


If my news server says it has good average retention, does that mean it is a good news server?


Not necessarily, no… Binary groups take up much more storage space than none binary ones, so their retention rates are considerably lower than none binary groups. A news server that carries a lot of none binary groups can have a high average retention rate because of this imbalance… Always check what the news server’s binary retention rate is when choosing a news server, not their average retention rate.


My ISP doesn’t bundle free Usenet access with my connection, what can I do?

If you are certain that your ISP doesn’t bundle Usenet access, then you will need to subscribe to a third party Usenet provider. Always contact your ISP first to make sure, though, as many do, but don’t advertise it in big flashing letters on their website.

I’ve heard that even though some people can get free Usenet access from their ISP, they still choose to subscribe to a third party Usenet provider. Why is this?


Put simply, it is because some ISP’s news servers tend to have poor retention and completion rates.


I’ve heard some people use the term “filling” what does it mean?


You can set up your news client to connect simultaneously to more than one server, assigning priority to one over the other. Doing this allows you to check your ISP’s server for files first, then your paid-for third party news provider if your ISP’s server no longer has the files… This is called “filling” and is a way of saving download usage allowances set by some news providers. Filling can also mean the act of posting files to a Newsgroup to fill a request, or fill data holes in damaged files.

What sort of download speeds can I expect from Newsgroups?


As you’re connecting directly to a news server for downloads, the speed is usually limited only by your connection capabilities. Provided your connection is clean, you should normally expect to max-out a standard ADSL connection.

Are there any ratios, or do I need to seed or upload to newsgroups

No... Newsgroups have no trackers taking note of how much you upload compared to download. You are also under no obligation to post or seed files as you are in other file sharing protocols. You can quite literally download as much as you like without worrying about share ratios etc. If or when you feel like posting something to a newsgroup, you are of course welcome to do so, and like all file sharing systems, your contribution will most likely be appreciated

This post has been edited by yourmercifulgod: Jun 30 2009, 09:15 PM