[OT] Usenet/news servers

[D.M.Chapman]

Ok, end of this month is the end of an era - UKC will be shutting down it's news service :-(

Seems hardly any universities run news services anymore so our upstream feeds have reached EOL and won't be being replaced so we will be effectively cut off. Given we would have to find (pay) for a new feed and also replace our existing machine (Sun E250 - ancient) it's not going to happen :-(

Sad given the history etc but more importantly, I'll lose access! (I'm one of the few people still using it!).

Given this, I need to find another news server I can use. I know people on here have recommended stuff before - is news.Individual.net still a good option?

Not interested in much beyond uk.d-i-y tbh :-) Recomendations?

Darren

[Bob Eager]

Given that UKC pretty well started news in the UK...and sold it to people...it is sad. But I was planning on not installing a news client on teh new box I'm putting into my office this week...no students use newsgroups any more, anyway.

I've been using it for years, and I've found it rock solid. Must be 8 or

9 years now, only seen it down twice, and only for a few minutes (< 20). Text only, good spam filtering.

The only objection used to be the way you had to pay. These days, they take PayPal, and 10 euro a year is nothing.

Yes, there are free ones, but IMO YGWYPF.

[S Viemeister]

They're no longer free - but 10 euros per year is _nearly_ free! They filter out vast quantities of spam, are reliable, and don't provide binaries. eternal september is free, but doesn't seem to be as good at filtering out cr*p.

[The Natural Philosopher]

albasani is ok ish.

irritates the **** out of me if you want to post to two newsgroups and they decide its got to have a followup set, but is OK for text.

Sad that UKC is closing down..must be the oldest setup in the country.

Pretty sure my first ever post sometime about 1986 went through UKC..

green screen VAX, UUCP connection IIRC.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I used to run the news service in Sun for Europe on a couple of E250's, one for all the peering connections, and the other for the client connections. Neither of them ever ran much above a few % CPU using INN.

Also news.eternal-september.org - free, but you have to register on their website first to get a username/password.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Has an email from Pipex (Opal) saying the same. Or rather that I'll have in future to pay Giganews for what I get for 'free' at the moment.

I've already set up free accounts with Aioe and News Eternal-September. Both seem to work fine.

[Another Dave]

Dave

[D.M.Chapman]

I've mentioned this here before, but for people who've not seen it:

stuff.

Yep :-)

I took over running the news service when Richard Heskith left - 12 years ago? I'm about the only active user at UKC now :-( (of course, we aren't called UKC anymore either...)

Still, giving eternal-september a go - seems to work so far :-)

Darren

[D.M.Chapman]

Yep, when I moved the sevice from a Ultra1 to a E250 we took two primary feeds and then fed something like 20 further sites. Over the time these dwindled (last vanished around 5 years ago). Now our upstream is going.

Given we are having to make some drastic cuts to service there is no way usenet is going to make the cut :-(

The E250 was overkill in terms of cpu - but it was a spare machine we had from some project. CPU and RAM not a problem - disk io is the only bottle neck when running expires. Oh well, it's time has come :-(

Giving that one a go now. Seems ok. Looks like I'm meant to post from a valid email addr though *scrapes brain trying to remember how the hell to get trn to do that* :-)

Cheers,

Darren

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yup. I'm not in there by name, but my company as was, is :-)

Deep sadness. IF I could get a free feed...

[Andrew Gabriel]

I didn't pay for any of our peering feeds, and didn't charge for any of the downstreams. However, you do need to find someone who will pay for your internet connectivity. Fortunately, I had access to a 34Mb (symetrical) internet link which was otherwise very under- utilised at the time.