News-Service.com FAQ

1.1 What is Usenet?
1.2 What are newsgroups?

2.1 Why choose News-Service.com?
2.2 What does News-Service.com offer?
2.3 What doesn't News-Service.com offer?
2.4 What retention does News-Service.com offer?
2.5 Does News-Service.com offer Usenet access to end-users?
2.6 What is your position in the Usenet market?
2.7 Do you censor Usenet?

3.1 Do you offer headers?
3.2 What does your server farm look like?
3.3 What network do you use?
3.4 Do you offer SSL?
3.5 What is SSL?
3.6 Do you offer alternative ports?
3.7 Do you carry all newsgroups?

4.1 How do I become a reseller?
4.2 What do I need to do?
4.3 How do I manage my reseller account?
4.4 Which data will be charged?
4.5 How does News-Service.com charge the customer?

1.1 What is Usenet?

Usenet is a distributed network which means that the submitted information is always available via the fast internet connections from your local Usenet Provider. Usenet offers the ability to efficiently exchange information among all other Usenet users around the globe.

Usenet, which is short for Unix User Network, is one of the oldest communication networks, being developed in 1979 and was made available before the internet and the World Wide Web were invented. Usenet isn't governed by any authority and can be characterized by the absence of a central server or administrator. Usenet servers distribute all the information they receive among other Usenet servers around the world, enabling all Usenet users to have access to all information available on the global Usenet.

Usenet was designed to be able to discuss scientific insights and ideas among universities and scientific institutions around the world on a broad scope. Therefor Usenet was designed to distribute only text messages. In 1990 a method was introduced to be able to decode files (like documents or images) to text, so they could be distributed on the global Usenet.

Every post submitted to Usenet has to be stored by all Usenet servers. This results in a continuous flow of new Usenet articles. As the Usenet servers storage capacity isn't unlimited, older articles have to be removed in order to make room for newer articles. The period of time that articles are available is called retention. As different Usenet providers have different storage capacities, the retention differs per Usenet provider. The retention of Usenet services offered by Internet providers (ISPs) is significant lower (on average 10-20 days) then the retention offered by professional Usenet providers (hundreds of days).

Being one of the oldest networks, Usenet has survived many new innovations. At present, Usenet's popularity is still growing, while more and more people discover the advantages of using Usenet. As more people are becoming active on Usenet, more information is offered to the global Usenet. The daily newsfeed (which is the amount of data offered to Usenet on a daily basis) is now well beyond 5 terabyte on average (winter 09/10).

Usenet is known by many names. Synonyms for Usenet are Newsgroups, News or Newsserver.

1.2 What are newsgroups?

The information available on Usenet is stored in newsgroups. Thousands of newsgroups exists covering almost every conceivable topic. Newsgroups are sorted hierarchically. The most basic categories that newsgroups are sorted into are known as top-level hierarchies. There are eight international top-level hierarchies which are known as the Big 8. These hierarchies are:



• comp.* - computer-related discussions
• news.* - discussions regarding Usenet itself
• rec.* - discussions regarding recreation (like hobbies, games, sports)
• sci.* - discussions of scientific topics
• soc.* - for socializing or social discussions
• talk.* - discussions of contentious topics like religion or politics
• humanities.* - literature, religion, philosophy
• misc.* - for discussions not suitable to the earlier mentioned newsgroups


Most countries have their own top-level hierarchy. Discussions in these newsgroups are normally conducted in the local language. Some examples are:



• nl.* - Dutch newgroups
• de.* - German newgroups
• es.* - Spanish newgroups
• fr.* - French newgroups


The previously mentioned newsgroups are managed by various (local) entities. These entities manage the list of available newsgroups. The creation of a new newsgroup is mostly done through a voting process.

The alt-hierarchy is a large top-level hierarchy which has no centralized control of the hierarchy. Anyone who is technically capable of creating a newsgroup in this hierarchy can do so. The alt.* hierarchy is not confined to newsgroups of any specific subject or type.

2.1 Why choose News-Service.com?

Reliable Partner
News-Service.com has been offering Usenet services since 1996. Therefore News-Service.com is very experienced in offering professional Usenet access in a Business to Business model. In contrary with most other Usenet Providers, News-Service.com doesn't compete with its customers by offering Usenet access directly to end-users.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)
Because of our Business model, a lot of large-scale Internet Service Providers (ISPs) rely on our services. Therefore we offer a higher Service Level than most Usenet Providers do, resulting in an extremely high service availability (uptime). We guarantee this availability by offering a Service Level Agreement to every customer, which is unique in the Usenet market.

High speed network
News-Service.com owns and operates her own multi-homed tier-1 network. Therefore we are not depended on third parties. Our network has several 10-Gigabit connections to Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) throughout Europe, to several tier-1 carriers and to several large ISPs through Private Peering. An extensive network of peering relations results in short paths to the end-users wherever they are located.

Completion
As the world's largest Tier-1 Usenet provider, News-Service.com distributes more Usenet articles than any other Usenet provider on the planet. Furthermore, News-Service.com operates a very extensive Usenet peering relation network. This means News-Service.com has direct Usenet peerings with almost all significant Usenet servers on the internet. Therefor, News-Service.com is able to offer a higher completion then any other Usenet provider can offer.

Retention
News-Service.com always offers a high retention for binaries and text articles. Text articles will never be expired, which results in an always increasing text retention. Please see the Retention page for current retention details. The specified retention is applicable for ALL newsgroups, not just a few selected newsgroups like most other Usenet providers offer.

Direct support
News-Service.com offers friendly and responsive technical support by email and by phone. This support is being offered, not by a external callcenter, but by our own, in-house, engineers. In addition, our Reseller Portal offers various monitoring tools. In the unlikely event that an emergency occurs, our engineers are available 24/7 to assist you.

2.2 What does News-Service.com offer?

News-Service.com offers access to our Usenet platform from any location all over the world. Fur this purpose News-Service.com operates a large scale network to allow high-speed downloads from any location on the internet. News-Service.com doesn't offer services to end-users directly, but only to resellers (or Internet- and Usenet providers). A variety of products can be offered to the end-users to be defined by our individual customers. Finally, News-Service.com can also implement additional requests or custom projects.

For authentication purposes customers are encouraged to implement their own database. However, as an additional service, a central database operated by News-Service.com can also be used. News-Service.com supports a variety of databases and a variety of authentication protocols. Internet providers often allow access based on the end-user's IP address.

2.3 What doesn't News-Service.com offer?

News-Service.com doesn't offer search engines, index sites or client software. News-Service.com also doesn't offer direct support to end-users. And finally, News-Service.com doesn't offer billing services.

2.4 What retention does News-Service.com offer?

News-Service.com always offers a high retention for binaries and text articles. Text articles will never be expired, which results in an always increasing text retention. Please see the Retention page for current retention details. The specified retention is applicable for ALL newsgroups, not just a few selected newsgroups like other Usenet providers offer.

2.5 Does News-Service.com offer Usenet access to end-users?

No, in contrary with most other Usenet Providers News-Service.com doesn't compete with its customers by directly offering Usenet access to end-users. News-Service.com has a wholesale model, which means News-Service.com only offers her services to resellers, Internet providers (ISPs) and other Usenet providers.

2.6 What is your position in the Usenet market?

News-Service.com distributes more Usenet articles than any other Usenet provider on the planet. News-Service.com has an extensive peering network with other Usenet servers around the globe. A lot of Usenet resellers, Internet providers (ISPs) and fellow Usenet providers (USPs) rely on the services offered by News-Service.com. As one of the first dedicated Usenet providers, News-Service.com holds a firm position in the international Usenet market.

2.7 Do you censor Usenet?

No, News-Service.com doesn't censor articles or newsgroups at all. Every article submitted to Usenet will be accepted by News-Service.com's servers. Even if News-Service.com doesn't carry the specific newsgroup, the article will still be accepted and made available to our customers for retrieval by Message-ID (NZB).

3.1 Do you offer headers?

Yes, News-Service.com offers headers (overview) for all newsgroups. Naturally, for text newsgroups the headers for the full retention are available. Most Usenet providers only offer 7-10 days header retention for the binary newsgroups. News-Service.com however, offers a minimal header retention of 55 days for all binary newsgroups (winter 09/10). Up to date details about the offered retention, including header retention, can be found on the Retention Page.

3.2 What does your server farm look like?

The Usenet data is stored by News-Service.com on hundreds of servers and thousands of hard drives hosted in professional data centers. Our server farm is fully redundant and extremely scalable, which allows us to rapidly meet with our customers growth. Depending on the popularity and the age of an article, the article will be stored on a SSD drive, a SAS drive or a SATA drive. Some pictures can be found on our NOC page.

3.3 What network do you use?

News-Service.com owns and operates a low-latency, multi-homed tier-1 network. The network, which is build on high quality, industry-leading network equipment, has several 10-Gigabit connections to Internet Exchange Points throughout Europe, to several high quality tier-1 carriers and to several large ISPs. An extensive network of peering relations results in short paths to the end-users wherever they are located, which enables us to offer very fast speeds. The network is also easily capable of dealing with modern high-speed Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) connections. More details on our network can be found on our NOC page.

3.4 Do you offer SSL?

Yes, News-Service.com offers the possibility to use SSL encryption to all customers, without additional charge.

3.5 What is SSL?

SSL, which is short for Secure Sockets Layer, is a security protocol which provides a safe and secure data transfer between News-Service.com's servers and the end-user's computer by using encryption. The downloaded data cannot be tracked or monitored by third parties. The username/password exchange is also encrypted, which provides protection against identity theft. Using SSL might also avoid traffic shaping implemented by some Internet providers.

3.6 Do you offer alternative ports?

Yes, News-Service.com currently (winter 09/10) offers 7 alternative ports for downloading without SSL enabled and 4 alternative ports for downloading with SSL enabled.

3.7 Do you carry all newsgroups?

Yes, News-Service.com carries all active newsgroups. Whenever we receive an article for a non-existing newsgroup, the specific newsgroup will be automatically created. To keep the list of available newsgroups clean, newsgroups which are inactive for an extended period will be automatically deleted.

4.1 How do I become a reseller?

Becoming a reseller is simple. Please send an email to our Sales Department and someone will contact you to discuss details and possibilities. Please mention your wishes and include your personal name, company name, address details and phone number(s).

4.2 What do I need to do?

While News-Service.com provides fast and reliable Usenet access to end-users, our customer is responsible for setting up a billing system and for offering customer support to the end-users.

4.3 How do I manage my reseller account?

News-Service.com provides an easy to use web-based Reseller Portal, which can be used to manage your account, offers many tools and allows you to view various statistics, graphs and accounting and billing details.

4.4 Which data will be charged?

Most Usenet providers charge all data which has been sent to the end-users. News-Service.com on the contrary only charges data which are the direct result of the following NNTP commands: ARTICLE, BODY, HEAD. This means you will only be charged for the actual downloaded data and you will not be charged for downloading headers (overview), for the overhead caused by TCP/IP and for posting articles. This rule applies for all offered billing methods.

4.5 How does News-Service.com charge the customer?

News-Service.com offers various billing methods. Customers can be charged based on the actual amount of downloaded data (measured in gigabytes), on a per account basis or based on the actual used bandwidth (measured in mbit/s).