Usenet

Users read and post messages (called articles or posts, and collectively termed news) to one or more categories, known as newsgroups.

A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations using Internet.

It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture.

The term generally refers to a suite of computer programs and protocols allowing remote execution of commands and transfer of files, email and netnews between computers.

Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to Internet forums that are widely used today. Today, Usenet has diminished in importance with respect to Internet forums, blogs, mailing lists and social media.

Early Internet forums could be described as a web version of an electronic mailing list or newsgroup (such as exist on Usenet); allowing people to post messages and comment on other messages.

Usenet is culturally and historically significant in the networked world, having given rise to, or popularized, many widely recognized concepts and terms such as "FAQ", "flame", Sockpuppet, and "spam".

The first documented use of the term "sockpuppet" dates back to July 9, 1993, but it did not become common in USENET groups until 1996.

Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980.

James Tice Ellis ( – June 28, 2001) was an American computer scientist best known as the co-creator of Usenet, along with Tom Truscott.

It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture.

In 1979, Tom Truscott and Steve Bellovin, graduates of Duke University, created an early predecessor to dial-up Internet access called the USENET.

Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980.

Tom Truscott is an American computer scientist best known for creating Usenet with Jim Ellis, when both were graduate students at Duke University.

Usenet is culturally and historically significant in the networked world, having given rise to, or popularized, many widely recognized concepts and terms such as "FAQ", "flame", Sockpuppet, and "spam".

It later came to be used on Usenet to mean excessive multiple posting—the repeated posting of the same message.

It was originally built on the "poor man's ARPANET", employing UUCP as its transport protocol to offer mail and file transfers, as well as announcements through the newly developed news software such as A News.

A News, or Netnews Version A, originally known simply as news, was the first widely distributed program for serving and reading Usenet newsgroups.

It was originally built on the "poor man's ARPANET", employing UUCP as its transport protocol to offer mail and file transfers, as well as announcements through the newly developed news software such as A News.

A newsreader is an application program that reads articles on Usenet (a distributed discussion system, which groups its content into a hierarchy of subject-related newsgroups, each of which contains multiple threads or discussions).

The later peer-to-peer networks operate on a similar principle, but for Usenet it is normally the sender, rather than the receiver, who initiates transfers.

Therefore, USENET, a distributed messaging system that is often described as an early peer-to-peer architecture, was established.

Many Internet service providers, and many other Internet sites, operate news servers for their users to access.

A news server is a collection of software used to handle Usenet articles.

Usenet was conceived in 1979 and publicly established in 1980, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, over a decade before the World Wide Web went online (and thus before the general public received access to the Internet), making it one of the oldest computer network communications systems still in widespread use.

By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web: the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 0.9, the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the first Web browser (which was also a HTML editor and could access Usenet newsgroups and FTP files), the first HTTP server software (later known as CERN httpd), the first web server, and the first Web pages that described the project itself.

Today, Usenet has diminished in importance with respect to Internet forums, blogs, mailing lists and social media.

Before blogging became popular, digital communities took many forms including Usenet, commercial online services such as GEnie, Byte Information Exchange (BIX) and the early CompuServe, e-mail lists, and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS).

See also news server operation for an overview of how news systems are implemented.

Among the operators and users of commercial Usenet news servers, common concerns are the continually increasing storage and network capacity requirements and their effects.

The groups in alt.binaries are still widely used for data transfer.

The alt.* hierarchy is a major class of newsgroups in Usenet, containing all newsgroups whose name begins with "alt.", organized hierarchically.

One little cited defense of propagation is canceling a propagated message, but few Usenet users use this command and some news readers do not offer cancellation commands, in part because article storage expires in relatively short order anyway.

Control messages are a special kind of Usenet post that are used to control news servers.

Today, Usenet has diminished in importance with respect to Internet forums, blogs, mailing lists and social media.

This became the foundation of Usenet, conceived by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, and established in 1980.

In the 1990s, before access to the Internet became commonly affordable, Usenet connections via Fidonet's dial-up BBS networks made long-distance or worldwide discussions and other communication widespread, not needing a server, just (local) telephone service.

In this fashion, Rush's system implemented a store and forward public message system similar to Usenet, but based on, and hosted by, the FidoNet system.

On the Internet, Usenet is transported via the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) on TCP Port 119 for standard, unprotected connections and on TCP port 563 for SSL encrypted connections which is offered only by a few sites.

The Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) is an application protocol used for transporting Usenet news articles (netnews) between news servers and for reading and posting articles by end user client applications.

Usenet newsgroups in the Big-8 hierarchy are created by proposals called a Request for Discussion, or RFD.

The Big 8 (previously the Big 7) are a group of newsgroup hierarchies established after the Great Renaming, a restructuring of Usenet that took place in 1987.

Usenet was conceived in 1979 and publicly established in 1980, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, over a decade before the World Wide Web went online (and thus before the general public received access to the Internet), making it one of the oldest computer network communications systems still in widespread use.

The hostname of a web server is often www, in the same way that it may be ftp for an FTP server, and news or nntp for a Usenet news server.

On the Internet, Usenet is transported via the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) on TCP Port 119 for standard, unprotected connections and on TCP port 563 for SSL encrypted connections which is offered only by a few sites.

Another mechanism is for the client to make a protocol-specific request to the server to switch the connection to TLS; for example, by making a STARTTLS request when using the mail and news protocols.

talk.origins (often capitalised to Talk.Origins or abbreviated as t.o.) is a moderated Usenet discussion forum concerning the origins of life, and evolution.

Some clients such as Mozilla Thunderbird and Outlook Express provide both abilities.

For usenet news groups they offer the latest NNTPS.