Are you new to Usenet and newsgroups?

Usenet can be seen as a large network of separate servers which are linked to each other but located all across the world. Messages posted on one usenetserver will be spread globally, but stored locally. This goes for text messages as well as for binary files. There is a constant transfer of data between all the usenetservers to exchange all new messages.

Usenet is split into different sections. These sections are groups and called newsgroups, for obvious reasons. Every newsgroup contains specific content which is often related to the name of the group. For example: a “sound.mp3” group contains mp3 sound files. However, this is not always the case. The group ‘alt.binaries.nl’, for example, contains various binary articles (posts), also in other languages than Dutch (NL).

When you have a Usenet account, you can browse the newsgroups and download their articles using a newsreader program. A newsreader to read only text messages, and view simple attachments, is Microsoft Outlook Express, found on every Windows computer. When you also want to download binaries newsclients like GrabIt or NewsLeecher are good applications. The program GrabIt is even freeware!

While downloading from Usenet more often, you will notice that the ‘retention’ of your Usenet server is an important factor. This retention determines how long the articles will be available on the newsserver. NewsXS has a retention of 180 days, which belongs to the highest Usenet retentions worldwide!

SSL creates an encrypted connection between NewsXS and your computer. This way your NewsXS account-information will be send encoded over the Internet, providing more safety and privacy. Especially when u are using public (wifi)networks. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) will also see only the encoded data. In some situations using SSL can improve your download speed because some networks can limit the default usenet port or protocol.
The default usenet poort 119 has to be set to 563 while enabling SSL in your newsreader.