Loading ...
Newgroups (NG), Usenet and BBS are one of the oldest services available on the Internet. They are similar to the forums that are widespread in the Web at present, in that these are places where people come to discuss, mostly through text messages.
The core of Usenet is a network of newsgroup servers. A newsgroup server operates on the NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol), similar to a Web server running on HTTP. Each server hosts various newgroups, and the content in all the newsgroup servers is synchronised on a regular basis.
A user starts off a discussion by sending a message to the newsgroup address on any NNTP server. Other users connected to the same NNTP address, and tracking the newsgroup can read that message. After the NNTP server syncs with other NNTP servers the message becomes visible to all NNTP users (this process is sometimes also called message propagation). Similarly, replies to the message are also sent by users to the NNTP server they are connected to, which then syncs the data with the rest of the servers.
Usually Internet Service Providers host NNTP servers for their subscribers. In the original scheme of things there were eight top level categories of newsgroups, namely
- soc
- comp
- sci
- rec
- talk
- humanities
- news and
- misc.
“soc” for discussion related to society, politics etc; “comp” for discussions on computers and related technology; “sci” for scientific discussions; “talk” for discussion on general topics; “news” to discuss latest events; “misc” for uncategorised topics; and “rec” to discuss hobbies or other recreational activities. The “alt” category was added later on, and with fewer restrictions on creating new NGs in this category, it now has the most NGs. Starting a new NG in the “alt” category is more easier than starting one under any of the rest. (But it is still more difficult than starting your own Web forum).
Since there is no central authority ensuring a strict classification for NGs, it is common to find NGs under top level category names .There are subgroups under each of these main categories, and
recursively, more subgroups under those. A newsgroup can be uniquely identified by its address which consists of the names of all the groups it is under—for example comp.lang.c++ is a newsgroup discussing the C++ programming language which was classified under the languages newsgroup for discussing languages, under the comp groups for discussion on IT topics.
When compared with Web forums, newsgroups are comparatively “serious” in nature. Unlike forums with their reps and smilies and emoticons and avatars, newsgroups are predominantly all text. But, there are NGs that contain pictures and other content. In fact, alt.binaries is an NG that is specially used to post large files like movies etc, almost just like P2P networks.
Unlike forums where there will be a censor or admin to monitor the content, anything goes in most newsgroups. People are free to post any topic in a newsgroup, but if they expect any meaningful discussion it is best to practice self-censorship.
Most NNTP servers charge for granting access to users. Some require you to register. But there are others that are free. Since binaries take up a lot of space and bandwidth, it is almost impossible to come across free NNTP servers offering this category of NG. It is important to realize that the content on most NNTP servers are regularly purged. So the chances of finding older topics are
quite slim, but this varies from server to server with some having a shorter retention time than others.
To access NGs a NNTP client or newsreader is needed. NGs can be also be accessed from online sites like www.groups.google.com which regularly updates NG data. Google has its own version of newsgroups called Google Groups, which should not be confused with the original NNTP newgroups.
Given the similarity between e-mail and newsgroup clients, most e-mail clients can also work as NG readers (and vice versa!), and include the necessary options to configure an NG account. Configuring an NG client is similar to configuring an e-mail client, but much simpler. One only needs a newsgroup IP to begin with. If the NG only allows registered users, a username and password will also be needed. A list of free NNTP servers can be obtained from online sites like
Loading ...