What is Usenet?
Usenet is a vast Internet bulletin board, divided into "news groups," that began in 1979 at Duke University when the Internet was still a new idea with few users. Each news group represents one topic of interest. For example, there is a news group named "alt.binaries.pictures.military" that focuses on military photos and movie clips. Although Usenet was originally all text material, there are now thousands of news groups with photos, music and videos of all types representing the full range of people's interests. A number of the newsgroups are on military subjects, both historical and present day. Although the name implies something about "news" the newsgroups deliver gossip, rumors, technical info, advice, social networking, and all types of music and visual content much more frequently than news.
The Usenet is a volunteer community. That is to say, people make personal decisions about what to post on Usenet and others decide what to download from the vast number of postings. You do not have to post anything if you don't want. Many thousands of people are adding content daily and millions are downloading. You can download with complete anonymity -- the person who posted the item does not know who is downloading it unless you choose to post your own comments. There is no central "Usenet HQ" -- it is a distributed system of servers like other Internet services.
Using Usenet for Free
M38A1 jeeps at 2004 Camp Jeep Europe. Military photo from Usenet accessed via Giganews.
Good news! Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide at least some access to Usenet as part of your service package. Just like you get access to email through the ISP you also get access to Usenet. To use Usenet, you need software called a "newsreader" just like you need an "email client" to read email. More good news! Most of the major email client software includes a newsreader (eg, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, and so forth).
To get started you only have to do a few easy things:
- Get the name of your Usenet service from the ISP. This is normally part of your setup information but if you can't find it, try the ISP's web site or tech support.
- Configure your newsreader to point to the ISP Usenet service, using the information from your ISP.
- Select the newsgroups you want to monitor. If you don't know any newsgroups there are search capabilities to help find things to get you started. For example, I put "jeep" into the newsreader search and found dozens of photos including the one at the start of this section.
Get More out of Usenet
You may be completely happy with the free services described above or you may want more. For example, the free Usenet accounts are often limited. They don't have very many of the newsgroups, they may censor content, they may not allow photos and other attachments, and they may not hold onto the material for very long. There is are reasons for these limitations:
- Photos/video use a lot of storage and consume a lot of network bandwith to transfer
- The longer messages are held (the "retention") the bigger the storage requirement. Usenet in total has an immense daily load
- People browsing through Usenet and downloading things puts a big load on the ISPs servers
For these reasons, many ISPs have put severe limits on their free Usenet. Specialized Usenet providers have come into the market to fill the gap. For a small monthly fee, you can connect to their servers where they provide many more newsgroups, allow multimedia attachments, and can handle the server and bandwidth loads of large numbers of users.
For example, after much experimentation with various services, Olive-Drab.com now uses Giganews for our Usenet access. Giganews is a fast and reliable service, with industry leading retention of over 110,000 uncensored newsgroups. They are compatible with all Usenet newsreaders and offer a no-obligation free trial so you can see for yourself. If you decide to use their service, they have a range of reasonably priced plans to fit your needs.
As an alternative to Giganews, you can try Power Usenet, or Usenet.net, two other good quality services with reasonable prices.
Other Ways to Access Usenet
Google has created a free Usenet service called Google Groups. Google Groups contains the world's most comprehensive archive of postings to Usenet, dating back to 1981. You can join any current group of create a new one for your own purposes. Google Groups eliminates the need for newsreading software and lets you use Google to search the archive. However, there are no images on Google Groups, only text.
Here are some Google Groups examples:
Other free but limited services built around Usenet are offered by many companies. For example, Microsoft hosts Usenet groups that provide support for Microsoft products, accessible through Microsoft's web site.
Usenet Newsreader Software
The newsreader in your mail client may or may not be everything you want. For example, very large files (especially video) are often broken up into multiple segments for Usenet posting. This avoids size limits imposed on messages by some services but it also creates a problem -- to see the video you have to reassemble the pieces. Modern newsreaders take care of this for you, automatically detecting all the parts, downloading them, and creating the final video file ready to play.
Most newsreaders also manage the newsgroups you have a steady interest in, keeping track of what you have already downloaded, automatically fetching new messages according to filters you set up, and many more nice housekeeping tasks. The newsreaders in Outlook and other standard software do these things too, but usually less well than the specialized newsreaders.
Recommended: NewsRover, a very powerful, low cost newsreader package with a free trial period so you can try it out. Giganews has made arrangements with several news clients so that Giganews customers get discounts on their products.
