USENET is a system that can be accessed through your ISP, but it is not the same service as the Internet. If you’re wondering why you have to pay for USENET services instead of, say, getting free access to Internet forums, read on to find out how this system works and why it’s now almost always a subscription-based service.
The USENET system
USENET has a sort of parallel existence with your regular Internet service. It is not a clandestine or, more appropriately, Undernet service. USENET is just different. USENET newsgroups are propagated by a system of decentralized servers that have complete control over the content they transmit. These servers usually carry specific content for their readers. A server in New Jersey, for example, will most likely have newsgroups that are specific to cities in that state, but a server in Wisconsin probably won’t have any of those groups.
You subscribe to newsgroups by selecting them in your newsreader. You can subscribe to as many as you like, but unlike the Internet, there’s more to joining a newsgroup than, say, browsing an Internet forum.
The differences
In the past, most ISPs offered access to the USENET system through their services. This is not the case. At the same time that ISPs have stopped offering this service, there has been a lot of interest in the service and how it works. This has made it profitable for companies to start offering subscription services. There are some significant advantages to accessing the USENET system in this way that are worth mentioning.
Subscription can be better
When ISPs provided USENET access, it tended to be a second-rate service in terms of the bandwidth they allocated to it. With subscription services, bandwidth is substantial and download speeds tend to be very fast. Today’s USENET services also to have more useful information about them. In addition to newsgroups and the conversations that take place in them, there are extensive binaries (the USENET term for files) available for download.
USENET has also become so popular that the newsgroups themselves have become very diverse in terms of content. The hierarchy system makes it easy to know which is which, so you don’t have to search ten or twenty different newsgroups to find what you’re looking for, as is often the case with Internet forums.
There are newsgroups dedicated to almost every topic, so you’ll find a lot of information to explore on this service. Since subscription providers depend on good USENET access for a living, you can also be sure that you won’t suffer in terms of bandwidth or other technical elements of the service. This service has a lot to offer and these days it is often best offered through a subscription service. However, Google has an extensive collection of historical USENET posts, so newsgroup information can be found this way as well, if you’re not ready to subscribe and participate.
