Brandon Ochs

Overview
What is Usenet? Articles & Distribution Servers Newsgroups Binary Content & Retention Time

What isnt Usenet?

It isnt a computer network It isnt the internet It isnt a large bulletin board system (BBS)

What is Usenet?
Computers communicate through protocols This is how Usenet is possible Different from the TCP/IP protocol Developed in 1980 at the University of North Carolina and Duke University

Articles
Must include a header and body Similar to email Rules for distribution

Article Distribution

Any message contributed gets sent out and copied to all servers

The articles are distributed to every Usenet server (180,000 as of 1994)

Wikipedia.org

Assigned to a newsgroup

Usenet Servers
Information is decentralized Similar to a Peer to Peer network (Server to Server) Today information is sent through the internet

www.top1000.org/

Newsgroups

comp.*: computer-related discussions humanities.*: Fine arts, literature, and philosophy misc.*: Miscellaneous topics news.*: Discussions and announcements about news (meaning Usenet, not current events) rec.*: Recreation and entertainment sci.*: Science related discussions soc.*: Social discussions talk.*: Talk about various controversial topics

Wikipedia.org

Flooding Algorithm
Used in Usenet and peer-to-peer file sharing systems Each node acts as both a transmitter and a receiver Each node tries to forward to every neighbor except the source node

Binary Content
Convert file into 8-bit ASCII values Restricted to specific newsgroups Split into segments because of article size restriction

Wikipedia.org

Parity Files
Used for data recovery Forward error correction Allows for verification of data to recover corrupt or lost data

Retention Time
Storage for each group is limited Retention time started out small Public servers often have small retention times

Usenet Traffic
Traffic has increased over time Most of this is binary content

Wikipedia.org

ISPs and Usenet

Many offer a Usenet server Ones that dont often offer access from another provider

Who Owns Usenet?

No one controls Usenet Loose collection of administrators The software distributes Usenet articles to every server thats willing to accept them

Newsreaders
Program used to navigate Usenet Many newsreaders may access the server at a time Newsreaders may do different tasks

Future of Usenet
Not well known among new internet users Reliant on administrators donated disk space Cost of storage is dropping as Usenet demand is growing

Importance of Usenet
Precursor to web forums Internet culture was born on Usenet Immense repository of files

Questions

What are 5 properties that make Usenet unique? What algorithm is used to propagate Usenet servers?

Works Cited

Pfaffenberger, Bryan The USENET Book. Addison Wesley Publishing Company, 1994 Lueg, Christopher and Fisher, Danyel From Usenet to CoWebs. Springer 2003 Dougherty, Dale and Todino-Gonquet, Grace Using UUCP and Usenet. OReilly 1987