NEWSGROUP | Internet Fundamentals

NEWSGROUP

A newsgroup is an Internet-based discussion about a particular topic. These topics range from sports, cars, investments, and teen problems. Note that there are more than 13,000 newsgroups in existence. Newsgroups are organized into subject categories, with the first few letters of the newsgroup name indicating the major subject category and sub-categories represented by a subtopic name.  Some major subject categories are: news, rec (recreation), soc (society), sci (science), comp (computers) etc. Users can post to existing newsgroups, respond to previous posts, and create new newsgroups.

Users post messages to a news server which then sends them to a group of other participating servers. Then other users can access the newsgroup and read the postings. The groups can be either “moderated,” where a designated person decides which postings/message will become part of the discussion, or “un-moderated,” where everything posted is included in the discussion (no posting is removed).

Usenet

The discussions on various topics are distributed through Usenet servers. Usenet is a collection of newsgroups. In other words, usenet is a collection of servers around the world.  Each server holds these posted messages for a certain period of time. This period of time is also known as retention time. Usenet can be compared with an internet forum, but the main difference is that the messages are not stored in one server and are only available for a certain amount of time.

A user posts a message in a certain newsgroup and then this message will be distributed via the different newsgroup servers. The other users can login anytime to one of these servers via special software (called newsreader) and see all new messages in that newsgroup. They can also reply to the newly posted messages and these new posts will also be distributed via Usenet servers. If the retention time of a certain server is 30 days, then these messages will be available just for 30 days in that server.

NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol)

Note that usenet uses NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol). To participate in a newsgroup, you must subscribe to it. You can choose from a number of different “Newsreader” programs that allow you to access and participate in newsgroups. Newsgroup access has also been integrated into Netscape and Internet Explorer, so you can just use your Web browser if you want.