How to connect to Usenet
Software Requirements
Now this is the easiest part of all. To connect to the
Usenet, you only need a Usenet client. Most browsers already have such
a client built in. Outlook Express (part of Microsoft's IE) is
for e-mail, but also for Usenet. Same is valid for Netscape's (or
Mozilla's) Messenger. Even Opera has not only an e-mail,
but also a news client (as Usenet clients are called more often). You
see, in most cases you already have such a client installed. Other OSes
like Linux (for example) will already have more than one client installed
after a default installation (e.g. a command line client, a XServer client,
a KDE and a GNOME client).
Windows clients, like the ones that ship with browsers,
are good for beginners, but you will soon recognize that they lack a lot
of features, are inflexible, slow and don't satisfy your needs any longer.
For that case, I have made a little list of clients you may want to try
in the related links section of this page.
Service Requirements
To receive messages from Usenet, you have to connect
to a Usenet server with your client. Therefor you'll need an Internet
connection (unless you have the ability to connect to a local Usenet client
directly) and you'll need a server that allows you to connect. Many ISPs
run their own Usenet server (e.g. AT&T WorldNet, Concentric, Pipeline,
EarthLink, MindSpring, RoadRunner, AOL, etc.) and as customer you are
free to use that server. If you don't know if your ISP has such a server
as well or how the address of that server is, simply send a friendly mail
to your support team and ask them.
If your provider doesn't offer such a service, there are two choices
left:
-
You might be able to find a free server, that allows everyone to
connect. Such servers became extremely rare and often suffer by many
problems. This is because the bandwidth costs are very high and people
on Usenet don't behave in such a way that these services have a good
chance to survive very long. Also spammers often abuse these services
what cause them to be shut off the net and thus these services often
don't live very long. Often you have to combine serveral free servers
to a single server (some tools allow you to do that), as many good
servers are read-only, so you can retrieve articles from them, but
you need another server to post.
-
Better than free servers are commercial servers. While you have to
pay to use their service, they don't suffer by any problems like the
free servers. However, many let you pay a lot, but offer you very
little service (often their service may look good on the first look,
but use them longer and you might get disappointed).
WEB-to-Usenet Gateways
On the Internet are a few WEB-to-Usenet gateways. Some
are commercial services and some are for free. They offer you to read
Usenet articles and reply to them directly within your browser, without
a Usenet client and without having access to a Usenet service. If you
have no other choice, that might be a possible way for you to connect
to Usenet. Web-TV users need such a service if they aren't happy with
the Web-TV Usenet server. BTW, some commercial providers offer such a
gateway as bonus for customers.
Related Links
All the links in the tables below are not part of TGOS.org and will open
in a new browser window if your client supports that.
Downloading Usenet related software
These are general download pages, that you can use to
search for Usenet clients (also non-Windows users should try them). I
added a list of assorted clients for Windows users farther below.
| Download.com |
Search one of the biggest software libraries on the Net. Choose
your OS, the kind of license you are seeking for (freeware, shareware,
commercial) and the kind of client you need. See also how popular
a client is thanks to download statistics. |
| Tucows |
Everything that has something to do with Internet can be found on
Tucows. Search their database or browse by OS and topic. What makes
Tucows special is that they have a good support for OSes like Linux,
MacOS and other not so popular ones, further they have over 100 mirror
pages, sorted by area, what guarantees you fast access. As extra bonus
Tucows tests all software they offer and rate it. |
Interesting Windows clients
|
Binary
News Reaper (BNR)
(freeware)
|
The name says it all. The first version of this client was named
Binary News Reader (BNR1) BTW, the latest version is now named Binary
News Reaper (BNR2). This tool was exclusively designed for downloading
binary files of Usenet, for discussions, you must use a different
client, as this client doesn't allow you to post replies to articles
to Usenet. Therefor it allows you to use powerful filters and supports
all the latest Usenet encoding schemes.
There's also a Linux version available.
|
ForteAgent
(commercial)
FreeAgent
(freeware) |
One of the most favorite clients there is. Especially the latest
version of ForteAgent supports really a lot of features, however,
it's not a client for beginners, because only with the right configuration
you will see the real beauty of this client and for beginners, this
can really be a complicated task. Also has good filter abilities,
but they could be better. Unfortunately ForteAgent only supports
one server at a time (multiserver configuration are not easily possible),
so it's not the best choice for people that have to access multiple
servers at the same time (unless they use a tool like Hamster, see
Service Requirements).
FreeAgent is the small brother for ForteAgent. You can give it
a try to see what ForteAgent looks like, but it has a lot less features
to offer.
|
NewsPro
(commercial & freeware) |
This client has also been designed for downloading binaries, it
has multiserver support and multithread support (can download multiple
files from multiple different servers at the same time). If you
deal with a lot of free servers that carry some binary groups, this
program can be really helpful. If one server has missing parts of
a file, it will automatically check the other ones for this parts,
so a download will only fail if all servers together don't have
all the parts. It also has great search abilities to find what you
are looking for as fast as possible.
There is also a freeware version available, but not all features
are implemented.
|
ReNews
(adware & commercial) |
This client is a good client for taking part in text discussions,
it's famous for it's search abilities. It's easy to use, but also
doesn't have as many features as other clients listed here. Nonetheless
it may be an alternative for users who tried other clients and were
not pleased for some reason.
It's a adware, meaning it displays advertising on your screen in
a reserved part of the client window while you are using it. You
can disable that by buying the full version.
|
XNews
(freeware) |
Even though it sounds like a Linux/UNIX client, it's a very lovely
Windows client, with lots of powerful features and a nice GUI (more
customer friendly than ForteAgent). Only disadvantage: it's an online
client (it's designed for people who are online all the time and who
have a rather fast Internet connection). It can cash downloaded news
article, but it can't get all new headers from all subscribed NG with
a single click for example (you always have to enter the group manually
before the client will catch new headers). It has multiserver and
multi-identity support. For downloading binaries it's a good client,
for taking part in text discussion or searching the binaries it's
not the ideal choice, but it you can also use it for that if you like. |
WEB-to-Usenet Gateways
Google
(free service) |
This service was formally known as DejaNews before it was bought
by Google and is one of the most famous gateways on the Net. They
keep messages for several years (!!!), but offer only text
Newsgroups. Their power search engine is the best that the Net has
to offer, they offer a huge amount of Newsgroups and their article
completness is amazing. |
GUBA
(commercial) |
Giga-Usenet-Binary-Archive is no real WEB-to-Usenet Gateway, since
they don't allow posting. Further they only offer binary Newsgroups.
They archive pictures of binary NGs and offer them for download
via a HTML interface (with thumbnails). If you only want to suck
pictures from the Usenet, try this service.
|
Mail and News
(free service) |
This service offers you both, free e-mail and Usenet access. Their
interface is quite different compared to other services, but it's
not worse. They seem to be a very decent service, I'd suggest you
give it a try. |
Newsone
(free service) |
There servers aren't very fast and they display a lot more banners
than other services, but that's necessary to keep their service free.
Certainly not the best service you can find, but better than nothing. |
Commercial Usenet services
Will be updated soon.
Finding a free NNTP server
Since pages with links to free NNTP servers die like
flees, I decided to not link directly to those pages, but to a service
that collects links to those pages. I bet you can find something interesting
there.
DMOZ
- Public Usenet Servers
Finding a free open Usenet server is hard work. Good luck!
|
![[The Usenet Newbie Project]](zzzpics/newbie-project.png)
