CHAPTER 23 Usenet

23.1 Usenet

Usenet is a world-wide network of computers, most of them UNIX, that run netnews software. It's a public forum for the exchange of news articles, similar to bulletin boards. The articles are exchanged between sites by mutual agreement between the System Administrators of the sites. This requires either an ethernet or UUCP connection between the machines. Users can post, read, and reply to articles in any of over 13000 different topics, or newsgroups on the Internet. Locally you can find newsgroups that range from osu.general (site specific to OSU) to comp.sys.sun.admin (the Sun administrators list) to alt.tv.simpsons.

The major Usenet headings are:

comp - computer science related groups

sci - sciences other than computer science,

news - netnews software and general interest for netnews users,

rec - discussions of recreational activities,

soc - discussions of social topics,

talk - extended discussion of special topics (e.g. talk.politics),

misc - groups other than those listed above.

also:

can - Canadian

clari - Clarinet (UPI) news feed

bit - BITNET lists

Groups within these headings are created by consensus of the Usenet users. In addition there are other groups such as "alt" for alternate, that are created at the whim of individual users. These groups may not be carried by all Usenet news sources. Additionally there are groups with more limited distribution, such as cle, cmh, and oh, and local groups, such as osu, cis, and uts.

Unix System Administration - 8 AUG 1996

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