Newsgroups, the ultimate P2P alternative.

P2P is in the news, every day. You see organizations like the RIAA hunting down filesharers, you read about trojans and virii that are spread through P2P networks. Everything seems rather risky at the moment. A new player is emerging from the shadows which is using a very old communication system, the Usenet. You might know a part of the usenet if you ever read something from google groups. Google Groups is an archive of the part of the usenet that looks similar to bulletin boards.

But there is a hidden side, a side that many never heard about: The binary side. The usenet holds also a large binary archive which is growing by 2800 gigabytes daily. Yes, you read that right, 2,8 Terrabyte of files every day. All files (and the discussion as well) are stored in groups, like alt.binaries.dvd or alt.binaries.mp3. You can take a look at some of the files that are stored on the usenet by visiting either newzbin.com or yabse.com. The first lists user submissions in categories like movies, games and mp3, the second is a usenet search engine. Just enter a search term and it will search many groups for matches. If it finds matches you are able to download them, if you have a usenet account and a program that is able to download such files.
So, what are the main differences between P2P and Usenet ? First, if you want to download something from P2P networks you are always uploading the same file to other users while downloading. It is easy to detect filesharers by simply looking at the IPs of people who upload a certain file. In Usenet, you don´t upload at all. You download with full speed without ever uploading a single bit. Second, P2P downloads are slow most of the time. If you have only a few seeders the file might take very long to complete, if at all. Sometimes the seeders decided to stop seeding the file and you sit there with a file that is unusuable. Usenet files are always finished. If you see the file you know it is finished. Sometimes there are incomplete files but this is seldom if you have the right usenet provider and there is a way to complete those files even though they are incomplete.

I´am using a commercial program to download files from the usenet, it is called newsbin. There ar free tools out there that have the same functionility, one of them is grabit. I will explain how to configure grabit at the end of the article.

You also need an account from an usenet provider. I´am using Giganews because it is the provider that has the highest retention (stores files the longest time) and offers the highest speeds of all usenet providers. I´am for instance downloading files with 1,8 Megabytes per second using all the bandwidth of my 16 Mbit line.

Binary accounts to the usenet are not free. Providers have to change some money due to the immense transfer volume of the usenet. As I said earlier there are many usenet providers, some are good, some are bad. Giganews is the best, they offer three different account types. I´am using their unlimited account type, which means I´am allowed to download an unlimited number of files and megabytes for 24,99 $ a month. They also offer 25 gigabyte transfer volumes for 12,99 $ and 2 gigabytes for 7,99 $. They currently run a promotion giving every new user a 5$ discount on their first month plus a 3-day free trial.

So, the usenet offers everything that P2P networks offer. The pro is that you don´t have to upload, that you can download with full speed and that RIAA and the like are concentrating their efforts on P2P networks and not the usenet. The bad might be that you will have to purchase an account to download files and take part in the discussions.

Let us take a look at the grabit configuration. Install and start grabit. Just click next on the dialog until you see the main window of grabit. Rightclick on my grabit on the left and select Add Server. A new window appears. Enter the following data. Hostname: news.giganews.com ; Account name: the user name giganews send you ; Password: the password giganews send you. Maximum allowed connections: 10

The entry should be updated. Right click it (it should appear below my grabit) and select Refresh Group List. This retrieves all newsgroups from giganews. (more than 100.000 atm). Click on all groups on the right to see a listing of all groups. You can sort the groups by article count to see the most popular groups at the moment or take a look at newzbin to get an overview of some of the binary groups. You can also perform a search for some groups, for instance enter movie or binary in the search field.

Rightclick a group and select subscribe to add the group to your private listing. A + icon appears when you add the first group on the left and if you click it you see a listing of all your subscribed groups. Select the group there, right click and choose full update to retrieve all files that are stored in that newsgroup. The process might take a while at the first time because some groups hold lots of articles. The batch tab shows a progress bar of the downloads that are currently happening.

Clicking on articles will reveal all files that are stored in that group. New files are added all the time, it is worth to check groups more than once a day if you are looking for a special file. You double click an article to download it. It is really that easy.

It is of course illegal to download copy protected files and I do not encourage you to download such files. I for myself would never download such files from the usenet. It is possible though..

If you are interested, the usenet holds the largest amount of files worldwide, applications, games, movies, books, music and of course porn.

If you have further questions let me know, I will be glad to answer everything that came up during this long article.