Sexy Newsgroups

Usenet is one of the oldest computer network communications systems still in widespread use. Usenet is a non-centralized system for the exchange of data among a huge array of topics, with each topic split up into "newsgroups". What originally started as text based discussion between users, has come to include the exchange of binaries which include music, photos and video files. With over 100,000 newsgroups and almost no editorial controls. The top-level 'alt' group contains thousands of subgroups, many of which contain music, copyrighted material and pornography. With little control Usenet is the “Wild Wild West” of the Internet.

Originally newsgroups were not created for distributing binary files but they have become quite effective for this. When downloading files each user is drawing on the bandwidth of his or her own news server. This means that unlike P2P technology, the user's download speed is limited only by the speed of his news server, as opposed to the willingness of other people to share files. This is another benefit of newsgroups: it is not expected that users share. If every user makes uploads then the servers would be flooded; thus it is acceptable and often encouraged for users to just leech.

There is a limit on the size of individual posts such that large files can not be sent as single posts. To get around this, Newsreaders have been developed which are able to split long files into many separate posts. For readers they can automatically group such split files into single files, allowing the user to retrieve the file. Usenet is used to trade many terabytes of files every day.

There are two main issues that arise when transmitting binary files over newsgroups. The first is completion rates and the second is retention rates. The business of premium news servers is generated primarily on their ability to offer superior completion and retention rates, as well as their ability to offer very fast connections to users. Completion rates are significant when users wish to download large files that are split into pieces; if any one piece is missing, it is impossible to successfully download and reassemble the desired file. To work around the problem, a redundancy scheme known as PAR is commonly used.

The Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) is the protocol used for transporting Usenet news articles between news servers and end user client applications. If your Usenet provider does not offer Web Access you will need a NNTP client (news reader) to access Usenet. NNTP software gives you more control over how you access Usenet.

.NZB files are shortcuts to finding and downloading Usenet articles and attachments. On Usenet large file attachments are broken up over many messages. Traditionally you had to download all the headers for a newsgroup, then choose the headers for all of the articles containing the file you want, then tell the newsreader program to download them. With an NZB file, someone has already done all the work to select the headers for an attachment and built an index that can be used with any Usenet access provider. With one .NZB file you can download an attachment that may be spread over dozens, even hundreds of Usenet messages.

Usenet utilises the NNTP protocol and therefore has two main ports associated with it: port 119 for normal traffic, and port 563 for encrypted traffic. Obviously if you're sending stuff via these ports, whether it's encrypted or not, your ISP will easily be able to throttle the traffic going through those ports. The solution is to use a provider that allows encrypted connections via non-standard ports.

Here's a handy list of providers that offer these services:

EasyNews - Probably the best support for this: 21, 22, 23, 25, 53, 80, 110, 443, 8000 and 8080. All available for connection via SSL.
Newshosting - on NHXL you get access to 23, 25, 80 & 3128 normal and 443 encrypted. Other packages offer similar ports.
Newsdemon - Depends on the server but you can connect to any of them so: 19, 23, 25, 80, 81, 443 and 8080
Giganews - Jade to Platinum offer 80 and 23 with no SSL. Diamond offers SSL plus the use of port 443.
Supernews - Port 23 and port 80 for non SSL. 443 for SSL.