Internet News
Internet News, commonly known as “Usenet”, "Newgroups"
or “Network News,” is a worldwide message exchange
system. Individuals submit messages to specific news groups
related to their message topic (arts, science, literature,
sports, etc.). Messages are posted on a local news server,
which then distributes them to other news servers throughout
the world using the Internet. To read messages, users access
their local news server and download messages of interest.
Internet News is available to cyberMIND’s Dedicated Internet
Access customers.
News groups
A news article is formatted along the lines of an e-mail
message. In fact, the header information is based on the SMTP
header. However, instead of the “To” field being
an e-mail address, it is the name of the newsgroup or groups
to which the article should be posted. Once a news group has
been established at a site, that site will send any new messages
(news-group postings) to its “news feeds.”
“News feeds”
As news-group messages arrive at a news server, they are
immediately distributed to other Internet servers with whom
a news feed has been established. This is a distinctly different
approach than so-called "store-and-forward" systems,
which accumulate messages and then send them in batch according
to a defined schedule. The term “news feed” specifically
refers to this continuous collection and distribution of messages.
This is a powerful aspect of Internet News because it means
that a single message can quickly propagate to many servers,
making it available to millions of potential readers.
cyberMIND employs a nationwide network of news servers to
optimize news availability and delivery performance to its
customers.
Full vs. partial news feed
As a cyberMIND customer, you can elect to receive a full
news feed or a partial news feed. A full news feed updates
your news server with messages from all news groups maintained
by cyberMIND. A partial news feed is simply a subset of a
full news feed. You define the content of the subset. In other
words, you identify the news groups to which you want to subscribe,
and you receive only those postings.
System recommendations for a full news feed
A full news feed is a lot of data to be moving over the
network, currently exceeding 10 Gbps and growing rapidly.
To preserve performance, cyberMIND suggests that you adhere
to the following recommendations:
- Use an Internet connection of sufficient bandwidth.
A full news feed requires at least a connection of 1.544
Mbps (T1)
- Dedicate a computer to host the news feed
- Equip the news-feed host computer with sufficient memory
to store a day’s worth of messages (currently over
10 Gbps)
- If you are multi-homed (see Using
more than one Internet connection)
use a cyberMIND-assigned IP address for the news host,
and ensure that messages are received only from cyberMIND’s
network
How Internet News postings are distributed
News servers get Usenet postings by identifying peer servers
to which it will compare articles, and then swapping articles
that each peer server needs and that the other has.
cyberMIND peers with other large ISPs for exchange of Usenet
news feeds.
Networks typically have servers dedicated to the task of peering
with other servers as just described. Those peer servers then
feed their messages to other servers within that network.
The task of peering, then, is separate from the task of distributing
the messages within a network.
The servers that receive a feed from a peer server are known
as leaf nodes.
Here’s an example of how a posting travels through the
network to cyberMIND, and ultimately to you:
1. Article is sent to the network’s news server.
2. Article is sent from network’s internal server to
its peer server.
3. Peer server sends the article to cyberMIND’s peer
server.
4. Article is distributed by cyberMIND’s peer server
to cyberMIND’s various leaf nodes, and then included
in the news feeds to its customers.
News distribution occurs using Network News Transfer Protocol
(NNTP).
Subscribing to a news group
The content of your partial feed - the set of news groups
to which you’ve subscribed -is initially defined as part
of the process of ordering your Internet News Service from
cyberMIND. You can subscribe to other news groups by adding
the newsgroup in your news reader.
Canceling a news group subscription
To request that a news group be removed from your partial
news feed remove the newgroups from your new reader.
Note: Subscribing to a news group, or canceling a news-group
subscription, applies only if you elect to receive a partial
news feed from cyberMIND. If you have opted for a full news
feed, you have by definition subscribed to all news groups
- currently numbering in the tens of thousands.
ClariNet e.News
By subscribing to ClariNet’s e.News through cyberMIND,
you can receive wire stories, syndicated newspaper columns,
financial information, stock quotes and other professional
news in the Usenet news format. ClariNet delivers approximately
12 Mbps of information per day.
If you want to receive e.News via cyberMIND, you must also
subscribe to cyberMIND’s Internet News Service.
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