The Dutch Usenet provider XSUsenet is currently offering free lifetime accounts to access the Usenet. Usenet in this regard includes access to binary groups which usually are not offered for free Usenet users.

You get free life time access, a solid 600 day retention, no IP retention, no personal details on file. All you need to do to sign up is to enter information into the registration form on the provider homepage.

Here you need to enter a valid email address and a country (only Netherlands, Germany and Belgium are selectable). Once done you get the login and server details send to the email address that you have entered in the form.

You can then use the information to connect to the Usenet. The speed is capped at 1Mbit per second at two connection tops. Users who need more speed or connections can upgrade their account to premium access starting at $6.99 for a 100 Mbit connection per month.

Free Usenet clients that you can use are the web based SABnzbd or Grabit. Please note that Usenet or newsgroups are not only about downloading binary files. You find many discussion groups there, Mozilla is for instance using the Usenet for some of their development discussions.

It is likely that the company will eventually close down the creation of new free accounts. I’d suggest you grab a free account as soon as possible.

I have tested the service and it worked just fine. I received the confirmation email with the Usenet server information in my email. Setup was a breeze and connection speed was as advertised.

Users who are just starting with the Usenet, or want to try it without giving away personal information can use the service to do just that. It is not anonymous though, considering that the service still sees the IP that you signed up with and that you connect with.

You can check out the service’s homepage here. The sign up form is at the right side. (via)

But what’s data retention exactly? Those of you who have never used the Usenet may have some troubles figuring that out. To simplify things think of the Usenet as a huge network of servers where both text contents and binary contents are uploaded to. You may have heard about Google Groups; That’s a copy of the text content part of the Usenet, at least part of that. You find groups where every imaginable topic is discussed, from the latest recipes to computer programming and manufacturer support. It is like a huge forum with separate categories for every topic.

The binary part of the Usenet is where files are posted with messages, and where other users can reply and download. All Usenet users can post files to the Usenet, which then become available for all other users, provided that their Usenet provider monitors that group for posts, and that the user has an account that allows posting to the Usenet.

That’s almost like a public ftp server where anyone can upload stuff to. Oh, and all users can download the files as well, and read the messages of the uploaders and other users.

The binary part of the Usenet is responsible for the majority of traffic and storage space requirements. Terabytes of data get uploaded to the Usenet each day, which means that providers need lots of storage to store those files for their customers and users. That’s for example nine Petabyte of storage for Giganews customers.

If you know the guys at Giganews, you know that they will not stop there. Plans are to increase storage and retention further.

I have been a Giganews customer for a long time, and never have looked back after my initial signup. The thing that’s probably even more impressive than the 1000 day retention, is that I never had a problem with the service. It was always top notch, top speed with no connection issues whatsoever. Giganews is a premium Usenet provider, which means that they are definitely not the cheapest, but their quality and service is unparalleled if you ask me.

Congratulations Giganews Usenet. Oh, the winners of the 1000 days retention giveaway have been announced as well.

If you want to know what files you can download, try an indexer like binsearch.

Especially the last six month have seen an incredible growth by almost 50% in daily traffic. This increase in traffic, along with the increased retention of data, has made huge investments into new hardware necessary. It is not only the networking infrastructure that required new hardware but also the storage infrastructure to store the additional data that is getting uploaded to the Usenet every day.

Giganews for instance offered a binary data retention of 240 days two years ago, and of 100 days in February 2007. Today the company announced a retention of 900 days which is more than three times the original retention. The actual investments in new hardware needed to go beyond that figure to accommodate the daily traffic increase.

Want to find out more about the Usenet? Check out our guides Newsgroups, the ultimate P2P alternative, List of Usenet Indexing Websites and The best Usenet Search Engines.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Usenet?

Pro:

• Full bandwidth utilization
• Binary retention is longer than on comparable services, e.g. file hosting
• No P2P, which means no direct connections to other users of the service
• SSL encryption standard

Cons:

• A software is required, see Newsbin (commercial), Mimo (free for Giganews customers) for example.
• Accounts usually cost a monthly fee unless the ISP / Organization offers free Usenet access.

Giganews is currently offering 14-day trials and adds 50% off of the first month of Diamond accounts to that for new customers. Diamond accounts get a VPN free of charge with their account which for instance can be used by people from outside the United States to access US-only services such as Pandora or Hulu.

The invention of the NZB format changed that. An NZB file contains information about all files that are part of an upload. This means that it was possible from then on to load the NZB file to initiate the download of all files of that package.

Even better was the fact that it was also the birth of Usenet indexers, who crawl the Usenet for files and offer on the fly nzb creations (check out our list of Usenet indexing sites)

nzb newsgroups downloader

The Usenet client had to support the NZB format, which nowadays most clients do. You may remember from previous posts that we are really fond of Newsbin, a commercial Usenet software, that supports nzb files and a lot more.

Those users who prefer a free bare bones alternative might find find a suitable program in HelloNZB, a NZB newsgroups downloader. The free program specializes in NZB files, which makes it very simple to use and configure. The specialization has a few disadvantages as well, more about that later in the review.

The Java application needs to be configured prior to usage. The first step is the configuration of a Usenet server under Server Settings in the preferences.

We recommend the premium Usenet provider Giganews, but there are cheaper alternatives available as well, and some Internet users may even be lucky enough to have free access to a Usenet server, courtesy of the ISP.

The program accepts NZB files after the initial configuration, which can be loaded from the program interface. There is unfortunately no drag and drop support at this point in the development.

All NZB files are loaded into the NZB queue. The files are displayed on the right and the connection information at the bottom. A click on the start button initiates the downloads.

HelloNZB is a very basic Usenet software. It lacks many features that experienced users require, including the ability to configure multiple servers, the ability to browse groups manually, different download directories, thumbnail previews, speed limitations or an option to automatically process downloaded files so that they are unpacked to a directory.

Still, users with an Usenet account who only download files occasionally may want to give HelloNZB a try. It is easy to use which makes it suitable for users of all experience levels.

The nzb format changed that. It was basically a file that could be loaded into the newsreader which would then add the referenced files to the download queue. Very handy and probably the main starting point for all usenet indexing sites who now offer nzb downloads to their users.

If you visit the main site of the Usenet indexing service you are informed that Newzbin “has to close as a result of [..] legal action”.

The announcement links to a blog post that contains additional information about the case.

Things are moving fast at everyones favourite Usenet indexer Newzbin. A Newzbin Editor let slip some interesting gossip to me on IRC. Apparently Newzbin has been put into administration yesterday because it couldn’t pay its debts. Word is that they owe the MPA £230,000 just in interim costs, and that’s without a full costs ruling or a decision on damages. Apparently they also owe a software development house over £500k. They also stopped taking payments a few weeks back.

It seems that Newzbin is gone for good but the nzb file will remain and thrive as it did in the last years. Check out our list of Usenet indexing sites for alternatives.

600 days is a high number, almost two years of data that the folks at Giganews keep on their servers, Even more important than that number is the availability of the data. Some providers with that high retentions host many incomplete files as a downside. Giganews on the other hand owns the hardware and technique making it an effective and reliable solution bringing 100% uptime, full completion and no speed limits to the user.

Giganews Diamond account owners (that’s the highest account available) recently got a nice bonus added to their accounts in the form of a VPN account at VyprVPN which runs servers in the US and UK with no additional costs attached.

Why am I writing about Giganews and not other providers? Because I have been with Giganews for years and never looked back from that point on. If there is one paid service that I recommend on the Internet then it is this one. Enough said.

Users who would like to read up on an alternative can look at Joe’s article here on Ghacks to do so.

Giganews are currently running a 50% off promotion for new Diamond account owners. If you signup you only pay half the price for the first month.

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.

The main reason is quality and experience. Usenet providers who offer bargain accounts might run into problems eventually that might lead to situations with to many users and to little resources so that the aforementioned connection and download problems appear again.

Giganews is the quality Usenet provider and I’m more than happy to pay for that quality. What I like is that you can cap your line day and night without problems no matter if it is a 16 Mbit connection or a 50 Mbit connection (if I would have access to 100 Mbit I would love to test their servers then as well). They provide a tool called Giganews Accelerator that uses compression to download newsgroup headers 6-10 times as fast. Everyone who ever downloaded more than a million pages from a group knows how long this can take without compression.

Giganews has now reached the milestone of 400 days of data retention. This means that they keep the data that gets uploaded to the Usenet for 400 days on their servers. This must be an unbelievable amount of data as upload traffic per day exceeds several Terabytes (Giganews mentioned it exceeds 5 Terabytes per day in February 2009) these days. 400 days of retention means that Giganews users can go back and search in those 400 days for data that they would like to download.

You guys know that I never advertise services on Ghacks unless I personally use and like them. Giganews is one of the few that I can recommend to anyone. They constantly improve their service and never let me down in the past.

Here is a short list of what you need to get started working with the Usenet:

• You need a Usenet Provider that is providing the access to the Usenet. I recommend Giganews but there are others out there as well.
• You need a software program to access the Usenet. I personally use the commercial Newsbin Pro client but there are free ones out there like Alt.Binz or Grabit.
• You need some good Usenet search engines. You can use these search engines to search for files that have been posted to the Usenet. Users who are interested in getting a Usenet account might want to use these search engines first to see what the Usenet has to offer.

And that’s it. There are lots of guides and tutorials out there that help Usenet newcomers. If you have any questions let me know and I try to answer them in the comments here.

This web interface can be used to browse, search and download files from newsgroups. It supports nzb files which can be imported and exported. Other features include making use of multiple connections to a newsgroups server if that is supported by the server, using encryption if it is supported, downloading newsgroups headers, schedule updates of newsgroups, preview nfo and jpg files and smarty template support.

A few things are not supported yet like being able to upload to newsgroups or reading posts in non alt.binaries newsgroups. The web interface works with many popular newsgroups providers including Giganews, Astraweb and Newszilla.

The program itself has to be installed on a computer system running Linux, preferably a web server. Installation support is provided for Debian and Ubuntu with installation on other Linux distributions being similar.

Download to your debian-based (e.g. Debian or Ubuntu) linux PC.
Doubleclick on the file to install, or alternatively run:

# sudo dpkg -i urd_0.6.2-1_all.deb

(This will install URD in /usr/share/urd, and add an apache alias for /urd to that directory)

Change PHP's max memory usage:

# sudo vi /etc/php5/cli/php.ini
memory_limit = 128M

Uncomment the include path (for Smarty):

# sudo vi /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
include_path = ".:/usr/share/php"

Then go to http://localhost/urd/ and follow the installation instructions.

Usenet Resource Downloader could be an interesting application for users who want to download or browse newsgroups through a web interface.

When you subscribe to a mailing list, you generally have the option of receiving every individual message or receiving a daily digest. However, if you need to read a few, this can still clog up your inbox.

Whilst you could read web-based archives, my favourite option is reading them though Gmane – an NNTP/mailing list gateway.

Gmane allows you to read newsgroups through a USENET newsreader (basic newsgroup facility is built into software like Thunderbird . I find this a more manageable way to read mailing lists, because the client threads them for me.

Gmane works both ways: it allows you to post to newsgroups through USENET too. All it does is the first time you try to post to a mailing list, it sends you a verification email to confirm it is indeed you.

Gmane also allows you to read newsgroups through RSS, so you could use a feed reader (online or desktop)!

There are currently over 10,000 mailing lists accessible through Gmane, ranging from the Wikipedia mailing lists to a blackjack group! To find groups, browse their website or browse their newsserver.

Currently about 5 Terabyte of data gets uploaded by users world wide to the Usenet, a figure that is surely about to increase as the popularity of Usenet services rise. Giganews is currently running so called Usenet trials which offer the first three months of Usenet access of some of their Usenet plans for half the usual price. Users can for example get an unmetered unlimited download plan for $12.49 or the premium Diamond plan with additional SSL encryption and 20 consecutive connections for $14.99.

What do you get for that? If you have never heard about Usenet or Newsgroups before you might be wary about joining a Usenet provider. That’s understandable. A good start is to take a look at our Usenet Search article which contains links to several Usenet Search Engines. They can be used just like any other search engine. Just enter a name in the search form and look at the results. Downloads are only possible with a Usenet account and a software client for Usenet. There are several choices, we outlined one in our Usenet Client article.

Giganews are running trial offers right now that reduce the price of their two most popular Usenet accounts by 50% for the first three months. That means that you can get their most popular account (the one that I’m using btw.) for $14.99 instead of $29.99. The account will get you unlimited bandwidth, 256-bit SSL encryption and 20 connections to their services which usually means full speed downloads even for fast Internet connections. I cap at 1.8 Megabytes per second with my 16 Mbit connection and 10 connections to Giganews.

Users who want to test the Usenet account do need a Usenet client as well to be able to connect to the Usenet servers. There are a few free clients available like Alt.Binz. That’s all that is needed to get everyone started with Usenet. Some additional tips include using the Giganews Accelerator to speed up header retrieval from Giganews servers and to take a look at the Usenet Search article to access some of the best search engines available to find the files that you are looking for.

The Giganews accounts come all with a 14-day free trial period for extra safety. You will not be charged if you quit in that period and followed the rules outlined on the Giganews pages.

Here is the list of steps again:

• Visit the Giganews website and signup for an account.
• Download Alt.Binz or another Usenet client.
• Download Giganews Accelerator to speed up header retrieval
• Use Usenet search engines to find the files that you are looking for.

I think that the offer is a fair one especially for new users who never accessed Usenet in their life. Keep in mind that the monthly price changes to the usual after the first three months though.

Giganews is quite expensive, costing $25/month for a unlimited package. The retention and speed made up for this, but I have recently started to investigate alternative.

A friend referred me to Newshosting, a USENET provider which is beginning to roll out 250 day retention. Newshosting is slightly cheaper than Giganews, costing $15/month for an unlimited package. This sounded really good, but I decided to check alternatives.

On Newzleech, I spotted that Astraweb are increasing their retention to 270 days. Astraweb costs the same as Newshosting, $15/month for an unlimited package (or $10/month for a package with unlimited downloads capped at 1Mbit/second). However, Astraweb also offers a pay-as-you-go scheme; users can pay $10 for 25GB bandwidth or $25 for 120GB which they can use over any period of time. This is useful for light downloaders who download more than the cheapest packages Giganews provide for but only use about half of their monthly allowance. At the time of writing Astraweb are currently providing discounts, $11/month for an unlimited package.

Unfortunately, these increased retentions are not being provided at the moment. Rather, every day instead of deleting the one they would usually delete they are keeping it, waiting until they catch up with their promised retentions. Astraweb announced their increased retention from 160 days to 270 days on 31 Dec, so we’ll have to wait until mid-March until we can enjoy the full retentions.

Both Newshosting and Astraweb have American and European servers and Astraweb provides free SSL with all packages (on Giganews and Newshosting there’s an extra fee for SSL).

I cannot vouch for either service personally, although a trusted person has given me nothing but positive reviews for Newshosting.

Giganews also announced that they are currently running a special for AT&T customers. AT&T, much like Warner and Sprint / Verizon decided to discontinue the alt.binaries support for their customers and Giganews tries to offer them a new save home on the Internet.

AT&T customers will get the same deal that Warner / Verizon / Sprint customers got. They get up to 50% off of the first month of their subscription to Giganews. They can also signup for a free 3 day 10 Gigabyte download limit trial first.

If you want a tip I would definitely pick a Usenet plan that supports encryption to protect your privacy while being connected to the Usenet. Giganews users can also make use of the Giganews Accelerator which speeds up header downloads tremendously.

Alt.Binz is a free Usenet client that supports several of the most important features a news client should have. These features are multiple connections and SSL and NZB Support. Let me explain why I think that those three are essential. Multiple connections is a no brainer, Giganews (the best Usenet Provider) provides access to ten connections to their servers and a client should support that to maximize the speed from the server.

SSL is important for security. You don’t want your ISP or someone else snooping on your traffic finding out what you are downloading, right ? And NZBs are a a standard that makes it a lot easier to download from the Usenet. NZB files contain information about multiple files and their location on the Usenet. Instead of clicking on hundreds of files to download them you can simply load one NZB.

Alt.Binz looks like a great client. I had no troubles adding the Giganews server information to the client and support for the Giganews Accelerator was given as well.

The major difference is the approach. Newsbin provides direct access to Usenet groups while Alt.Binz does not, at least not in the way I have been using it for years. Alt.Binz has some Usenet search engines directly integrated into the program interface that provide access to NZBs. That’s a great feature and I hope the guys at Newsbin will implement it soon.

Supported are respected sites like Newzleech, Binsearch and several others. A full server wide search is supported as well. Now with Newsbin I usually visit the website of those search engines and download the NZB from those websites. This step is no longer required in Alt.Binz.

Alt.Binz is a great free Usenet client which I will definitely keep an eye on even though I have paid for Newsbin. The interface is intuitive and fast and it does provide access to several features that are definitely missing in Newsbin. Oh, and yes it seems to work under Wine in Linux.

The real benefits of the Usenet in my opinion are speed, if you have a good provider that is, reliability and better privacy, because of SSL and no direct user to user connections. On the downside we have the monthly fee, a Usenet client that has to be installed and configured and some time to subscribe to the right groups.

Usenet Search Engines help users find files faster. Most support the nzb protocol which combines all file information in one file that can be loaded into most Usenet clients. Good search engines should support advanced parameters, 200 day records, nzb creation and index most groups, at least the thousand+ important ones.

If you want to try the Usenet you could signup for a free 14 day trial at Giganews, the Usenet provider that I use for several years.

Newzleech [not available anymore]

I have discovered Newsleech only recently but have to admit that it provides one of the best Usenet search engines. It provides users with a general search, an option to browse groups, to browse posts and to subscribe to RSS feeds to be informed when a new post matching the criteria is made.

Search results can be filtered by group, post age and size. The results are displayed in a list showing the most important information such as name, size, group, age and completion status. NZBs are created on the fly by checking at least one search result.

2. Binsearch.info

Binsearch offers basically the same features that Newsleech does. You can make a general search, search only specific groups and define post age, size and several other parameters. Results can be checked and a NZB file will be created in the process which can then be imported in the Newsreader.

Yabsearch.nl [not available anymore]

A Dutch search engine with no English interface. Supports NZB creation and advanced search parameters. Displays size, name and completion status in the results.

Most information on those search engines is redundant meaning that all seem to index new posts fast enough and tend to display the same information in their search results. It’s still good to have some outs in case one of them goes down.