What is Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide bulletin board system of user-submitted notes or comments on various subjects that are posted to servers on a worldwide network. Every subject collection of posted notes is known as a newsgroup which cover every imaginable interest group. There are thousands of newsgroups and it is possible for you to form a new one. Most newsgroups are hosted on Internet-connected servers, but not all usenet machines are on the Internet, they can also be hosted from servers that are not part of the Internet. Usenet’s original protocol was UNIX-to-UNIX Copy (UUCP), but today the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) is used.
Most browsers, such as Netscape and Microsoft’s IE, provide Usenet support and access to any newsgroups that you select. On the Web, Google and other sites provide a subject-oriented directory as well as a search approach to newsgroups and help you register to participate in them. In addition, there are other newsgroup readers, such as Knews, that run as separate programs.
There are probably well over 30,000 newsgroups at any one time and more are added and deleted every single day and one of the most extraordinary facts about Usenet is that it isn’t part of any organization, nor does it have any sort of centralized network management authority.
