Usenet? What is it exactly, can you give any examples of Usenet sites?

Question

Thanks.

Answer 1

First, forget the word "sites"; this has nothing to do with the Web as you know it.



Usenet, which dates back to 1980 or so, is a distributed message-board system with no central server: any individual location can carry any actual newsgroup. It uses NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol). You can read some of the stuff through Google Groups, but you'll need an actual account with a newsgroup provider -- which will cost you, since ISPs quit giving it away years ago -- to do any serious work.



The provider I use is Agent, which also offers a newsreader by the same name. (It is not necessary to use Agent's newsreader to use Agent's service.) If you use Windows Live Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird mail clients, they can also be used to read newsgroups.



Generally, there are two types of messages in Usenet: text, which is readable, and binaries, which are encoded to fit in a text distribution but can be decoded to another file type (typically, pictures). Your newsreader should do the decoding on the fly.

Answer 2

If you think of Usenet as a file-sharing network, you won't be too far off the mark. However, looking at Usenet directly is sort of like looking into the sun: it can be very painful - especially binary newsgroups with millions of posts. Today, most people first go to an NZB website, search for something to download, and then use an NZB downloader program to download the file from their Usenet server. For step-by-step instructions, see this page: http://www.techsono.com/usenet/learn

Answer 3

The Usenet is actually the original way of communicating with others over the internet because email did not exist. It is organized into different topic based discussion groups called newsgroups where people carry on discussions on all sorts of different topics from astro physics to iphone software to nascar.



It's also a great mashup of user generated content and files, getting started can be a little slow, but I found a great site with videos, tutorials and it explains everything pretty simply - check out http://usenetlearningcenter.com/usenet-learning-center-what-is-the-usenet.php

Answer 4

Examples Of Newsgroups