What is Usenet?

[RCBH928]

Ok for a long time now, this word pops into my face while using the internet. I tried to understand what it is, but I really don't get it.

those alt.newsgroup.new things, are they like a website? is it an email address? Where do you put there?

What is Usenet, is it like an email group, and people send emails around? Is it still used? and by who?

I hear that it is used for exchanging pirated/porn files, but why would any one chose that and most people now are using p2p and torrents.

Why do I have to pay for using usenet? I went to usenetserver.com and you have to subscribe to use usenet. Why do I have to pay twice for using the internet? I pay my ISP already. I do not have to pay for anything else online including playing games, email, video, email, and more. So Why I have to pay for usenet? Or is usenet not part of the internet?

Can any one make this clear

[Pulsar_t]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet

What the wiki doesn't mention of course is that Usenet needs subscriptions in order to survive since it's no longer a priority for ISPs or other providers in any shape or form. If you dig around you can find free newsgroups but it's hardly worth the effort. Groups.google.com offers an archive of usenet discussions dating back to the early 80s.

[RCBH928]

thanx for your input
I already have looked into wikipedia
but I still don't get how it works or why would any one would be using it today
and is it part of the internet

[Pulsar_t]

Well the reasons people would be still using it today:
1) There remain some 'relic communities' from back when newsgroups were still very active.
2) To obtain unsolicited content.
3) To discuss things freely without moderation or TOS agreements. That's what the alt's are for! And unlike IRC messages posted on groups remain there for decades to come.

[Hatta]

USENET is awesome. USENET is a part of the internet, but it's not part of the web. It's a separate protocol, like email, FTP, etc. To get email, you have to connect to your email server. To browse USENET, you have to connect to your USENET server.

The way USENET works is you post a message to your ISPs USENET server. Your ISP syncs up with every other USENET server on the internet. Then people across the internet can read your message by connecting to their own USENET server. This is efficient for the ISPs. If I post a message to ISP A, and 1000 people on ISP B want to read it, ISP A only has to send it to ISP B once.

USENET is old, and largely unmoderated, so the spam problem has hit it pretty bad. Few people use USENET as a discussion forum anymore. But there's still some good ones out there. the apple II newsgroups are really good for instance.

These days the most popular use of USENET is file sharing. Since the upload bandwidth is provided by your ISP, there's no ratio. Just grab everything you can, it's great.

Some ISPs have dropped USENET. It's old, and not popular with unsavvy internet users. So it doesn't bring in a lot of business, and ISPs can save money by dropping it. Until file sharers switch to P2P that is, which is less efficient. ISPs tend to expire articles within a few days too, so you have to be quick. In those cases it's worth paying a private USENET server much like you might pay for a non-ISP email server.

[Niode]

The only ISP in the UK that I've come across is Virgin. However it is extremely hard to get on anything that isn't legit. I don't know if Virgin itself moderates it or it's the newsgroups not 'broadcasting' (I don't really know the word for how usenet transmits data to newsgroups) to virgin's for fear of being reported by the ISP or whatever.

Usenet is simplest when compared to a ubiquitous forum. If said forum had lots and lots of bandwidth and let you upload files to it. Every time you wanted to put a file on the forum you would create a new post with the file. Then everybody can download that file wherever they are as long as they had an account. Unlike P2P you can only download the file when the other user who had that file was online. With usenet you can access the file/message whenever you want as soon as the message is posted it can be seen forever/as long as the newsgroup is there.

Now the payment issue. Since usenet is primarily used for piracy these days (it has plenty of legit uses, it's a very convenient way of compiling information on a particular subject from many sources, but these have since taken a back seat since the invention of the internet forum), it's easier for ISPs to just not give you a usenet account. Ten years ago ISPs would have been forced to give you a newsgroup account. It would have been the same as your email address. So ISPs tend not to give free usenet access due to fear from repercussions from copyright holders/RIAA etc. Now some companies have seen a gap in this market and have started offering paid usenet accounts that allow unmetered unlimited access to usenet newsgroups. Since these newsgroups can be a treasure trove of information on the internet plenty of people gladly pay the premium. Plus they don't have to worry about maintaining share ratios like on BitTorrent they can download as much as their connection allows.

Unfortunately I don't know of any decent usenet providers. So I can't help with that.

[Jrecee]

On the topic of retro internet, here's an article from the Time Archives from 1993. . . I thought it was worth a read

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 16,00.html

[superlarz]

That article is really interesting to look back on, seeing what they thought would happen and actually has happened. Everyone likes to laugh about Al Gore inventing the internet but reading things like that make it clear that he was a visionary in that area.

[marurun]

Al Gore rocks my socks. He's awesome.

[Jrecee]

Obviously he needed to get the internet running so that he could create a complex networking system to trade information about manbearpig.