Mib Software Newsrate Usenet Server Comparisons


Why do some sites decide to not carry binaries or alt.*?



> Why do some sites decide not to carry binaries or alt.*?
> Is that because they don't want to carry x-rated binary groups, because
> they don't want the bandwidth of binaries, or some other reason?

A "Full Usenet feed" in March 1998 is reported to be 12-15Gbytes/day. (About 1.5 T1's!!!!)

Most small ISPs only have one T1. (In case you don't know a T1 is a connection to the larger Internet. Capable of about 1.5Mbits per second, raw transfer rate.)

But if you leave out alt.binaries, Usenet drops down to just a couple of Gbytes per day. That's a major difference in bandwidth and storage space! So a lot of sites "just say no" for practical reasons. Rather than trying to fit "too much" news into "too small" a pipe, some sites drop alt.binaries so that the other newsgroups don't suffer.

Some sites don't carry newsgroups which are outside the reason for the service. For example, a corporation may wish to have a newsserver which carries newsgroups of interest to their business, but not other newsgroups.

There are some sites that don't carry binaries for moral or ethical reasons. Mostly these are .edu sites. The pornography newsgroups are easily the most well-read newsgroups, unfortunately. If you were an commercial ISP and didn't provide them, you might lose a lot of customers, or get a lot of complaints. There are differences of opinion even on this point.

newsrAte works just as well for servers which do or don't carry subsets of newsgroups.

More Detailed Topics
Why is my alt.* or alt.binaries.* performance so much lower?
How do news articles get "missed?"
So what if I do poorly in an alt.* newsgroup? No one cares anyway.

Overview and Related Topics
How do I signup?

Up to The newsrAte RKT
Up to newsrAte home
Up to Mib Software home

Copyright 1998, Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software
INN customization and consulting
Email: newsrate@mibsoftware.com
Voice: 570-992-8824