Usenet has been around for a while; The first version was released in 1979 and was mainly used to transfer information. Also known as the Unix User Network, Usenet had the potential to be the modern Internet as we know it.
Today, Usenet has evolved greatly and is used for very different purposes than it was originally intended for. It is slowly dwindling in number of users, but a dedicated community of users still use it. But many people today have never heard of Usenet and don’t know about its role in Internet history—now it’s time to change that.
What is Usenet?
Like today’s modern Internet, Usenet was originally designed for one purpose: to transfer information from one point to another. At the time, ARPANET was the next best option, although the US military controlled it.
Usenet was first put into use by three students, Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis, and Steve Bellovin. Ellis and Truscott transferred the data using some Unix computers. They used the Unix to Unix Copy (UUCP) protocol, which resulted in the first successful data exchange on Usenet.
Eventually, ARPANET would lay the foundation for the modern Internet, as Usenet was deemed too complex for mass adoption. However, Usenet is still in use today, and contains over 30,000 petabytes of data, mainly articles, images, announcements, and emails.
Articles found on Usenet are grouped into different categories called newsgroups. This is similar to traditional online discussion platforms such as Reddit, in which discussions appear in the form of threads.
However, the main difference between traditional discussion platforms like Reddit and Usenet is that the latter gives you unrestricted access speed, the speed at which you can exchange data or download content.
Where traditional discussion forums are hosted on servers that control the load, Usenet is spread over a distributed network of news servers. Currently, Usenet is mostly used for saving and sharing files, known as binaries.
Usenet was the precursor to the bulletin board system-style discussion forums you see on the Internet. Some newsgroups are moderated, while non-moderated newsgroups comprise most of the network and are completely unregulated, giving users complete freedom to post as they wish.
How usenet works
Usenet is not a website that you can access. Instead, it is a standalone network that some might call an alternative to the web. To access Usenet, you need to use a newsreader such as EasyNews.
Most Usenet clients require you to purchase a paid plan before you can access newsgroups or download files. Newsreaders are like a web browser and search engine built into one, allowing you to browse files and read discussions in different newsgroups.
Newsgroup readers (referred to as newsreaders) are often available for a monthly subscription, and you can now access them directly on your web browser. For example, Newsbin Pro is a popular option. It is a simple newsreader client designed for Microsoft Windows that costs $30 per year.
There was a time when Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offered dedicated Usenet access, maintaining their own server infrastructure. However, as P2P applications such as Napster and Kazaa became popular and server maintenance costs continued to rise, many ISPs stopped offering Usenet servers.
That’s why you need to buy Newsgroup Reader access to access Usenet. Once you log in and start browsing the content, you’ll realize that most binaries (files) stored on the network are in a file format known as NZB (more on NZB files in a moment).
As the number of binaries increases, so does the cost of maintaining the server. This is one reason why maintaining a Usenet server farm is not financially feasible, especially given the declining demand.
Since its inception, Usenet has undergone many changes, and it currently uses the Network News Transfer Protocol, or NNTP, to share files. For context, the modern web relies on HTTP to transfer information.
As you can see, you can search for images, audio files, videos, executables, and entire disc images. You’ll find a lot of unmodded, pirated content on Usenet that, despite being easy to access, is illegal to download.
Browse Usenet Groups
A large part of Usenet are online discussion groups. You can search for groups using keywords like you would normally search for anything online. For example, here’s a screenshot of a gaming newsgroup showing a bunch of releases available for download.
Depending on the plan you purchase, you will have a limited amount of data available.