<<< Back to overview

Binary files on Usenet

How to post binary files correctly

Choosing the right binary group

Before you post anything to Usenet, make sure you've found the right binary group for it. Search for a subgroup of alt.binaries (NOT alt.bainaries!) where your files seem to fit best (going by topic). Please never post binaries off-topic, because unlike off-topic text posts, that's not excusable. Once you found it, make sure that people are really interested in your files. It makes no sense to post files to Usenet if nobody cares for them. Also keep in mind that Usenet is not your private binary exchange, so if only one or two people are interested in your file, there are a lot better alternatives than posting the files. If you don't see any interest in your files, try another (topic related) group. If this doesn't lead to positive feedback either, give it up. It's not worth to "force" your files onto a group, just to receive flames as reply.

Compressing data

Whenever you post something to Usenet, make sure it is compressed. Whenever possible use a compressed file format (e.g. JPG, GIF, PNG and not BMP). If no compressed file format exists for the kind of data you are trying to post, compress them either with ZIP or with RAR. There are a lot of things that speak for RAR, like great compression and good error recovery.

I personally suggest to use RAR only. The perfect options for RAR are:

• Best Compression (this option makes RAR slow, but it always increases compression a lot)
• Dictionary Size 1024 (this option uses more memory, but always increases compression again)
• Use Multimedia Compression (this option increases compression when compressing multimedia data)
• Create Solid Archives (this option is will increase compression when compressing many small files)
• Create Recovery Record (this makes it possible to repair smaller mistakes in the archive)

Splitting files

Whenever you post a file (or an archive consisting of multiple files) larger than 4 MB, use RAR to split it into smaller packages. Therefor you compress the data with RAR and choose a maximum package size of 4 MB. Post every package separately. One advantage is: in case you have to repost something, it's only necessary to repost a single package and not the whole file/archive.

Further you should tell your Usenet client to split files after 600 KB, if you want that they travel through Usenet without any problems. In case of packages a 4 MB that means 7 posts per package. BTW if someone only misses a part of package (e.g. part 5 out of 7), you don't have to repost the whole package. In case the package arrived without problems on your own server, you can download this part, copy the whole content of it to a new post and that way only repost the part of a package.

If you don't like the double splitting (first with RAR and then with your news client), there's another way: Simply tell RAR to break up the archive in packages of 450 KB (they will be about 600 KB after they got encoded with UUEncode or MIME). In that case your news client doesn't have to break them up again.

Many people ask: How to post 500 files in a row, isn't that a lot of work?
No, it isn't. Many news clients support multi-posting (= posting all files within one directory). If your client doesn't support that, try using Autopost.

<<< Back to overview