The Usenet can be best described to users who have never come in contact with it as a global forum with hundreds of thousands of groups and the ability for everyone to post and reply. The messages that get posted and read are called articles or posts and they are posted to so called newsgroups which are further divided into binary and textual groups.
Binary groups allow users to post files with their posts while textual groups do not. The main difference between forums and the Usenet is the decentralized system of the Usenet. There is no administrator or central server in the Usenet, everything is handled by independent servers that exchange data with each other.
Usenet access is provided by so called Usenet providers. Back in the days a lot of Internet Service Providers offered Usenet access but today there are only a few that do. Most stopped offering Usenet access due to the costs involved to operate or lease the infrastructure.
Public Usenet servers exist but they tend to come and go and are not as reliable as they need to be to be a good alternative.
The only other choice are Usenet Service Providers like Giganews. Giganews is respected in the Usenet community for its quality service. They might not be the cheapest provider around but they make more than up for it by providing their users with the best quality possible.
Users who are evaluating Usenet providers need to consider several factors beyond the monthly charges that they have to pay for the access. The most important factors are:
- Traffic Limits: How many Gigabytes can be downloaded per month?
- Connection Limits: How many simultaneous connections are allowed?
- Encryption: Does the Usenet Provider offer encryption?
- Data Retention: For how long are the Usenet articles stored on the servers?
- Speed Limits: What’s the average and maximum speed that users get?
- Completion: Are the files that are uploaded complete?
- Censorship: Are the newsgroups uncensored?
Giganews, as a top provider, is offering some of the best – if not the best – values.
- Traffic Limits: Up to unlimited traffic
- Connection Limits: Up to 50 simultaneous connections
- Encryption: 256 AES encryption offered
- Data Retention: 498 days of binary articles are stored by Giganews and almost 3000 days of textual articles
- Speed Limits: 50 Mbit+ (this is the limit of our test connection to the Internet, it may very well be even faster than that). Giganews operates servers in the United States, Asia and Europe to provide users with faster access times to the servers.
- Completion: One of the best completion rates in the industry. Completion rate is greater than 99% (rest can be usually handled with so called parity files)
- Censorship: Giganews provides access to over 109,000 uncensored newsgroups.
What you need:
The requirements that are needed to access the Usenet are one of the main reasons that it has not reached mainstream yet:
- Usenet Access: Access to a Usenet server is needed obviously. We recommend Giganews but there are other providers out there as well.
- Usenet Client: Several mail and chat programs offer access to the textual groups but the binary groups require a client that is able to handle those. One of those clients is Newsbin Pro which we have reviewed in last Christmas’ Giveaway. It is a commercial software but there are free alternatives like Alt.Binz available as well
Usenet Preview:
If you do not know what you get then you’d probably do not want to pay for access to the Usenet. There are several options on how to get a preview. Option one is to make use of the free trial option that Giganews offers.
Another option is to use a Usenet search engine like Binsearch to search for files that are of interest.
Personal Experience:
I have been accessing the Usenet for more than ten years and was switching Usenet providers constantly back in the beginning because they did not offer what they advertised. That is, until I signed up for Giganews for the first time which I have been now for several years.
I never – and I really mean never – had connection, retention or speed problems other than the occasional ten minute period when your Internet Provider drops your Internet connection and you get a new IP.
The release of the Giganews Accelerator made my life a lot easier as it was now possible to download the compressed headers which bumped the speed to 4-10 times the value that uncompressed headers where delivered.
I know one thing and that is that I will stick with Giganews for as long as they continue to provide this excellent service.
Christmas Giveaway
We have a very special offer today. Giganews was nice enough to provide us with three free one-year accounts.
1 Diamond account
1 Silver account
1 Bronze account
Please leave a comment below to be included in the draw. Let us know about your Usenet experience.
Raju is giving away Disk Rescue 2009 licenses, make sure to check out his giveaway as well.
Related Articles:
Giganews 1000-Days Retention GiveawayGiganews University
Giganews Usenet Trials
Giganews has now 100 days of retention
Giganews updates storage and offers 120 days retention
Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ using the icons below.
I have used usenet a lot in the past and I found it great….please count me in too!! Thanks
Include me in the draw. And give one account also :D
Thanks…happy x-mas.
used Giganews several years ago, downloaded gigabytes of data. very fast and reliable. always had what i was looking for.
would be excellent to get a new account.
Uhaaa! Count me im for this.
I would be happy to have an account. Thanks for this giveaway.
Hi, I’ve been using the trial version of Giganews and found it was one of the most reliable Usenet experience, most stable and provide the fastest newsgroups. So I hope I win one so that I can continue using Giganews’s great service.
Thanks
I have access to newsgroups through my French ISP, Free.fr.
But it is not 100% open. Some groups are not replicated, due to court decisions.
So I’d be more than glad to be included in the draw and get one of the giganews accounts.
Thanks for the offer–count me in. A great fan of usenet.
I haven’t used Usenet in a long time but everyone I know that still does ravea about Giganews, especially their article retention.
I’d love a chance at one of these prizes!
I used to use Usenet years ago. As the Internet developed it got easy to find things on the web or use things like Google for more mainstream newsgroups.
I’d love to try again and see what it’s like now
Pick me! pick me!
Awesome, I have little experience with Usenet but it worked well so I’m hoping for an account.
I remember back in 1997 when I worked at a small internet company that I was using forte agent to download so many mp3s from alt.binaries.sounds.mp3 and related groups that they had to disable port 22 on our internal network because it was causing slowdowns for our dial-up users. That was a fun job.
Been using astraware for a couple of months. The speed bump compared to torrents is amazing.
Down here in Australia, our internet is behind the times. As such, we, until recently, have never had download caps large enough to make Usenet accounts feasible.
However, recently 100GB caps have been implemented by major ISPs and with my new 100GB/100Mbps line, I am very interested in grabbing a Usenet account. I used a trial and have found it just so much greater than torrenting, which seems to be throttled by my ISP.
never used usenet but would be willing to try it out. Count me in!
I’m really curious about Usenet, i’m in for the draw!
Well I never used usenet. But hope I get this.
I always wanted to have USENET but never got to use it except for a couple of times with a friend’s account. Giganews seem to be a bonus and very helpful! I would love to win one :)
Hope i get it. never have used usenet before
I have some experience with usenet and from what I hear Giganews is the best.
I’ve not used it before but I’ll be very happy to have an account so that I try it.
This is awesome!!
I wish I can get this one!
I have tried Usenet little with UseNext and would like to get a Giganews account for free…
Thank You
I’m a daily Usenet user and my Astraweb account is about to expire. Count me in, please. Thanks!
I use newsgroups to access only the Freeware groups
Hey, the news forums is far the best way to find information on the net. Hope to get the first prize.
Merry C.
Hi, thanks for the giveaway, I have never used newsgroups but I would like to try it out. Please include me in the draw.
Big fan of Giganews. I’ve used their services in the past. I find them pricey but definitely high quality. My experience with them mirrors what you wrote above. I’d love a free account.
Thanks!
I’d love to check Usenet out. Haven’t used it yet, but I’ve heard only good things.