What are Newsgroup ?

Newsgroup are basicaly discussion servers, like big forums where you can't send/receive messages, files.
With time, these discussion storage have been used to upload/download files. Some years ago, ISPs proposed free access to newsgroup, but with the new illegal use of them, most of ISPs decided to close their forums. Some FAI go on with free access, like Free (in France), but they've been legally obliged to close some parts of discussions, the bigger one that proposed illegal files transfer.

Fortunately, some american servers propose to you a complete access to newsgroup and excellent data retention time.
But this has a cost (quite low compared to what you can get with and the quality of the servers, speed...)

What does Tutorials-HowToDo have to say on Newsgroup ?

HowToDo will help you choosing the good server compared to the use is done for you. We inform you on the cost, subscription fees, data retentin time, good offers...
Each newsgroup server has been tested and we gave them a note compared to some criteria.

Why Newsgroup instead of Peer to Peer systems ?

Kazaa, Emule and so on.. work on Peer-to-Peer system (P2P). Each user with the same file share a part of this file for another user that wish to download it. You depend on upload speed of each of this 2 users.

What's Upload speed ?
Each ISPs inform you about a flow, now between 25 and 100 M (about 1,5 Mo/sec for a 25M connexion). This flow is a download flow (downloading, in the way Server->Your computer). Upload flow is not clearly given (to send file, way Your computer->server). It's about 100Ko/s now.

When you use a P2P network, you'll get a part of a file on a remote computer which has its own upload speed. Let's say it is about 100ko/s. Even if you have a 25M ISP connexion (download speed), so about a 1,5M/s flow, before datas arrive on your computer, the remote computer has to send you these data but he can only send them to 100ko/s ! Therefore, you're totaly depending on the remote computer upload speed !

Total advantages of Newsgroup system ? People that share file with newsgroup system send their files directly on a remote newsgroup server and just once. Then, all users that want to download the files have to connect to newsgroup servers.
These servers are big one with huge upload and download flow ! You will be free to use all your download speed when downloading on these server ! For your information, with a theoric 25M download speed, we download about 1,4 Mo per second on american servers.

To sum up :
Advantages of Newsgroups VS Peer2Peer
1.Use of complete download speed of your ISP
2. File quality (you pay for a services, for a server and for datas. You'll never face fake file or virus on the server we recommand to you)
3. You don't have anymore to share files to be allowed to download files.
4. Download does not depend anymore on sources available, what you see is.. what you will get !

Disadvantages of Newsgroups VS Peer2Peer
1. Data retention : files are not available indefinitely, each server has his own retention time. Anyway, there's no common retention time on P2P network, so that's a quite small disadvantages !

How do I start ?

Now you know more about wonderfull newsgroup system, where starting ?

1. First, choose you download server. Visit category : Servers
2. Then, choose your Grabber (software to connect to download server). Visit catégory : Grabbeur
3. Navigate on the server. See category : Navigation (on going)
4. Repairing files downloaded. See category : Repair (on going)
5. Extracting files downloaded. Consult catégory : Extraction (on going)

Just follow website steps : Server, Grabber, Navigation, Repair, Extraction, and Post for the most curious people.

Environments :
Linux, Windows

Enjoy Newsgroup System, the best system ever seen !