Usenet: The Network News Mark R. Horton What is the Network News? Usenet (Users' Network) is a bulletin board shared among many computer systems in the computer science commun- ity, around the United States, Canada, Europe, and Aus- tralia. There are currently around 500 machines on the net- work. Usenet is a logical network, sitting on top of several physical networks, including UUCP, BLICN, BITNET, various Berknets and Ethernets, and the ARPANET. Sites on Usenet include many universities, private companies and research organizations. Most of the members of Usenet are either university Computer Science departments, private com- panies, or part of Bell Telephone Laboratories. Currently, most Usenet sites run the UNIX* operating system, although there are Usenet sites running VMS, IBM's OS/360, and the Z80 MARC system. The network news, or simply netnews, is the set of pro- grams that provide access to the news, and transfer it from one machine to the next. Netnews was originally written at Duke University, and has been modified extensively by the University of California at Berkeley. Netnews allows arti- cles to be posted for limited or very wide distribution. This document contains a list of newsgroups that were active at the time it was written, to assist you in determining the newsgroups to which you may want to subscribe. When creat- ing a new article, the level of distribution is controlled by specifying the newsgroup. Any user can post an articles that will be sent out to the network to be read by persons interested in that topic. Users can specify which topics they are interested in via a subscription list. Then, whenever they ask to read news, they will be presented with all articles of interest that have not yet been read. There are also facilities for browsing through old news, posting follow-up articles, and sending direct electronic mail replies to the author of an article. __________________________ *UNIX is a Trademark of Bell Laboratories. June 1, 1983 - 2 - Why Usenet? Usenet is useful in a number of ways. Someone wishing to announce a new program or product can reach a wide audi- ence of interested people. A user can ask ``Does anyone have an x?'' and will usually get several responses within a day or two. Bug reports and their fixes can be made quickly available without the usual overhead of sending out mass mailings. Discussions involving many people at different locations can take place without having to get everyone together. Another facility with similar capabilities to netnews is the electronic mailing list. A mailing list is a collec- tion of electronic mailing addresses of users who are interested in a particular topic. By sending electronic mail to the list, all users on the list receive a copy of the article. While the mailing list facility is quite use- ful, Usenet offers a number of advantages not present in mailing lists. Getting yourself on a mailing list is not always easy. You have to figure out who maintains the list and ask them to put you on it. Often these people are out of town or busy, and don't put you on the list for several days. Sometimes you have to send mail to the entire mailing list, hoping that one of the readers will tell you who main- tains the list. Once you are on the list, you often find yourself in the middle of a discussion. Netnews keeps old articles around until they expire (usually about two weeks) so you can browse through old news to catch up on what you missed. Similarly, referring to an old article is easy, without having to keep a personal file of all old mail. Another advantage is appreciated by the users of the system. There is less overhead in having only one copy of each message sent to each machine, instead of having separate copies sent to each of several users on the same machine. This cuts down on computer time to process the messages, and on line costs for telephone calls to transfer messages from one machine to another (when phone lines are used). Another advantage is in the disk space consumed. When only one message is sent to each system, only one copy of the message is kept on disk. In a mailing list environ- ment, each user has a copy in their own mailbox. Another similar system is called Notesfiles. This sys- tem originated on CDC's Plato system, and a UNIX implementa- tion exists. Some Usenet sites run Notesfiles instead of or in addition to Netnews. Notesfiles is best known for its screen oriented user interface. How do I Read News? In the Usenet jargon, topics are called newsgroups. A partial list of current newsgroups appears in figure 1. You June 1, 1983 - 3 - have your own subscription list of newsgroups to which you are said to subscribe. There are different classes of newsgroups. Network newsgroups, e.g., net.misc, are sent to the entire network. Geographic areas and organizations can have local newsgroup classes, too. The newsgroup nj.general is only sent to machines in New Jersey. The company newsgroup bell.all is sent to all Bell System machines. Local newsgroups such as general stay on the local machine. For example, general- might of interest to the local users. ``From the Arpanet'' (fa) newsgroups are used to gateway arpanet mailing lists into USENET. To read news, type the command readnews Each newsgroup to which you subscribe will be presented, one article at a time. As each article is presented, you will be shown the header (containing the name of the author, the subject, and the length of the article) and you will be asked if you want more. There are a number of possible choices you can make at this point. You can type ``y'' for ``yes'' (or simply hit return) and the rest of the message will be displayed. Another choice you can make is ``n'' for ``no''. This means you are not interested in the message - it will not be offered to you again. Among the other commands you can type after seeing the header of an article are: q Quit. The articles you have read or ignored are recorded and you are returned to the shell. s filename The article is saved in a disk file with the given name. r Reply to the author of the message. You will be placed in the editor, with a set of headers derived from the message you are replying to. Type in your message, and exit the editor. The reply will be sent off via electronic mail. You are then returned to readnews. f Post a follow-up message to the same newsgroup. This posts an article on this newsgroup with the same title as the original article. You will be placed in the editor - enter your mes- sage and exit. U Unsubscribe from this newsgroup. Variants of many commands use a ``-'' to refer to the June 1, 1983 - 4 - previous message, e.g., ``r-'' replies to the previous mes- sage, whose complete contents you have now seen. Submitting Articles To submit a new news article type postnews You will be prompted for the newsgroup, title, and distribu- tion on your terminal. Then you will be placed in the edi- tor. Enter the text of your article, and then exit the edi- tor. The article will be posted to the newsgroups speci- fied, and distributed to the appropriate machines across the network. Joining Usenet Admission to Usenet is open to anyone interested. An interested site administrator should first find a nearby Usenet site that is willing to feed them news. Then the two administrators set up a UUCP connection between the two sites, and transfer the Usenet software over the link. (The ``B news'' software is in the public domain, and comes with full documentation and installation instructions.) Next they set up the news connection. Test articles are sent over the link, and then the new site announces itself to the news- group net.news.newsite. (The list of Usenet sites, their Usenet neighbors, and who the contact persons are, is pub- lished monthly in net.news.map.) Once you have accepted a link from a site, unless there are good reasons not to, you should be willing to feed two or three more new sites in turn. No money is charged for the news itself or the software, but it is up to the two sites to make arrangements for any phone bills involved. There are Usenet sites in nearly every major metropolitan area in the United States and Canada, with especially heavy concentrations in New Jer- sey, Illinois, and Silicon Valley. If you know of a nearby Usenet site, you can either connect to them (if they are willing), or ask them to look in net.news.map to find you a nearby site. If you don't know of a nearby Usenet site, call me at (614) 860-4276 and I'll refer you to one. June 1, 1983 - 5 - This is a list of some major USENET newsgroups as of May 24, 1983. The full list is maintained by Adam Buchsbaum (research!alb) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Newsgroup Description ---------------------------------------------------------------------- net.announce Moderated newsgroup for important announcements. net.auto Automobiles and automotive products and laws. net.bugs General bug reports and fixes. net.bugs.4bsd Subgroup for UNIX version 4BSD related bugs. net.bugs.uucp Subgroup for UUCP related bugs. net.columbia The space shuttle and the STS program. net.cse Computer science education. net.eunice The SRI Eunice system. net.games Games and computer games. net.garden Gardening, methods and results. net.graphics Computer graphics, art, and animation. net.jobs Job announcements, requests, etc. net.jokes Jokes and the like. May be slightly offensive. net.lan Local area network hardware and software. net.lang Different computer languages. net.lang.c Subgroup for C. net.mail Proposed new mail/network standards. net.med Medicine and its related products and regulations. net.micro Micro computers of all kinds. net.micro.68k Subgroup for 68k's. net.micro.atari Subgroup for Atari's. net.misc Discussions too short lived for their own groups. net.movies Reviews and discussions of movies. net.news Discussions of USENET itself. net.news.group Subgroup for discussions and lists of newsgroups. net.news.map Subgroup for maps. net.news.newsite Subgroup for new site announcements. net.pets Pets, pet care, and household animals in general. net.politics Political discussions. Could get hot. net.rec Recreational/participant sports. net.religion Religious, ethical, and moral implications of actions. net.research Research and computer research. net.sf-lovers Science fiction lovers' newsgroup. net.sources For the posting of software packages. net.sport Spectator sports. net.taxes Tax laws and advice. net.unix-wizards Discussions, bug reports, and fixes on and for UNIX. Not for the weak of heart. net.usenix USENIX Association events and announcements. net.wanted Requests for things that are needed, e.g. device drivers, pointers to people, etc. net.women Women's rights, discrimination, etc. net.works Assorted workstations. fa.human-nets Computer aided communications. fa.info-vax DEC's VAX line of computers. fa.tcp-ip TCP and IP network protocols. fa.telecom Telecommunications digest. Figure 1 - Partial Newsgroup List June 1, 1983 - 6 - June 1, 1983