Requirements to be a Usenet Provider
There is no authoritative body which certifies that you have what it takes to be a Usenet provider. There is no license, no regulations. You can call yourself a Usenet provider and no one will stop you. But in order to provide Usenet news, you need compatible:
- hardware and operating system (generally a flavor of Unix)
see Usenet Hardware and Operating system requirements
- Usenet server software (generally INN, which is distributed as source code)
- at least one newsfeed (usually under contract, providing news using a transfer
protocol over top of TCP/IP sockets called NNTP)
It is very rare to find variations on the above choices. You may have a long effort ahead if you choose to use something other than Unix, for example. It is even more extreme to not use INN as your server software.
Since INN is distributed as source code (in C, shell scripts, and perl) you will also need a compiler, the operating system header files and libraries, and the knowledge to get the source compiled. A Bourne shell and perl are also necessary, but you might be able to find a way to work around them (after a great deal of work.)
You may have to do some "fine tuning" to your operating system or network.
As discussed in the Usenet RKT How does a newsserver work? topic, any design that satisfies the requirements will have similar architectures. For this reason, INN can be used as a starting point for describing and understanding most newsservers.
Usenet RKT Can I run INN on my machine?
Usenet RKT Partial Feeds
Usenet RKT How does a newsserver work?
Up to Usenet RKT For Providers...Getting Started
Usenet RKT What is Usenet? (General overview of usenet)
Usenet RKT What is INN?
Usenet RKT NNTP Protocol
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Copyright 1997-1998, Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software, INN customization and consulting