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Usenet News FAQ

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What are newsgroups?

A newsgroup is a discussion group, similar to a web site forum or a mailing list. There are tens of thousands of newsgroups available, covering just about any topic you can imagine. Newsgroups are also collectively known as "usenet news".

How do I access newsgroups?

First you'll need a "news reader" program (like Microsoft Outlook, Agent, Xnews, Gravity, etc.). Next you'll need to configure your news reader to point it at a "news server" that you have permission to use. The first thing that usually happens when you do this is that your news reader will download a master list of all the available newsgroups. This can take a few minutes depending on how many are available (typically 60,000 or more!). Once the list is downloaded you generally won't need to do it again. At this point you can browse the list of newsgroups, read the messages within them, and post new messages.

Does Islandnet.com have a news server?

Yes, it is named "news.islandnet.com".

What do I need to know to connect to it?

If you are using an Islandnet.com dialup connection then there's not really anything else to know. Just configure your news reader to point at "news.islandnet.com" and that's it.

If you want to use our news server from a non-local connection (a cable or DSL connection perhaps, or your work connection, or another ISP) then you'll also need to turn on the "authentication" option in your news reader. This will require you to enter your Islandnet.com username and password each time you connect to the news server.

NOTE: If you are an Islandhosting.com user then you must add "%ih" to your username when authenticating. Likewise, HighSpeedPlus.com users must add "%hsp" to their username.

Does news.islandnet.com support SSL encryption?

Yes. To access our news server via an encrypted connection (which is a good idea if you are using authentication) you must configure your news reader to connect on port 563 instead of port 119 (and of course your news reader must support SSL encryption -- most do).

I use a different ISP and they block outgoing connections to port 119!

Although it's not very common, some ISPs try to prevent their customers from spamming newsgroups by forcing them to use their own news server and blocking access to external news servers. If this is happening to you, try configuring your news reader to connect to port 1119 instead of 119 (note the extra number 1).

I'm looking for a particular newsgroup and can't find it on your server.

Are you sure it's not there? It's a very big list and dpending on your news reader it may or may not be shown to you in alphabetical order.

Is the newsgroup you're looking for still in existence? Newsgroups come and go and often get split into other groups. Just because a group is available on another news server somewhere doesn't mean it's still valid.

It's possible that none of the upstream news servers that we deal with carry the group. If this is the case there's not much we can do except to pass your request on to them and see if it can be added.

Also note that we do not carry "adult" themed groups, so please don't even ask.

I went into a newsgroup and it's empty!

The first possibility is that the newsgroup just isn't used any more (or very infrequently). Another possibility is that you are the first person to try and access the newsgroup through our server and you have to wait a bit for it to "fill in".

Our news server only downloads article headers for newsgroups that are "active", meaning customers are actually trying to read them (to download articles for all newsgroups all the time would waste a tremendous amount of bandwidth and disk space). If a newsgroup is not being accessed by anyone for a long period of time, it will eventually stop downloading articles for it. When you try to access an inactive newsgroup it becomes active again, but it may take several minutes before you start seeing any articles in it.

Why are some articles so slow to download?

The first and most obvious thing that affects download speed is the size of the article. Larger articles (like those with binary attachments) will take longer.

If the article in question has been requested previously (by yourself or another customer) then it should be in the cache and downloading will be fairly quick.

If the article has not been previously cached then our server must fetch it from one of the upstream servers. It will first try to get it from the same news server that it first found the headers on. If the article still exists on that server then downloading should be fairly quick, but of course it depends on things like the connection between here and the upstream server (which might be anywhere in the world) and the load on the remote server.

If the article is no longer available on the original upstream server, it then asks all the other upstream servers it knows about if they have it. This part can be slow depending on how many servers it has to ask.

It says an article exists but when I try to read it it's not available.

The server works by downloading only the article headers. The actual article body isn't downloaded until you request it. It's possible that the upstream servers that had the article at one time have deleted it for some reason (usually due to expiring old articles). Different upstream servers have different policies regarding article expiration. Some may keep articles around for months, while other only keep them for a few days.

I got an error when I tried to connect to the news server, what does it mean?

Under certain circumstances your connection to the news server will be refused with an error message. If your news reader software is good it should show this error message to you (although some news readers hide the error message and instead give you a generic and vague message). The possible error messages and what they mean follows:

Server load is too high, try again later.: This is rare, but it means that our server is under an unusually heavy load and can't accept new connections at the moment. This might happen if the databases are being purged, or software is being upgraded, etc.
Too many overall connections, try again later.: To help prevent the "load is too high" message, the server has a limit on the overall number of simultaneous connections it will service. This limit is set fairly high and should rarely be reached, if ever.
Too many connections from your IP, try again later.: The server also limits the number of simultaneous connections that come from the same IP address. This prevents one customer from monopolizing the news server. If you get this message then you are trying to open too many parallel connections to the news server.
Too many connections from your account, try again later.: This is similar to the previous error message, except it's based on your username. This prevents one customer from monopolizing the news server, even if they connect from multiple IP addresses.
You have exceeded your download limit (X/Y): Each account has a daily download limit that varies depending on which base plan you choose and can range from 256K to one gigabyte. If you get this then your only option is to wait until the following day.
Invalid username or password: You are trying to use authentication but the username and/or password you provided is invalid.

Are there any local Islandnet.com newsgroups?

Yes. Our helpdesk system (https://helpdesk.islandnet.com/) provides a number of web based forums where customers can seek technical support, discuss community events, etc. These forums are also available via our news server as the helpdesk.* collection of newsgroups. Postings made through the news server will be visible in the web forums and vice versa.

Where does Islandnet.com get its news from?

Our news server consolidates news feeds from many upstream sources. We subscribe to one commercial news feed service and that is where the bulk of the articles come from. But no news service is 100% complete, so we supplement that with several other news feeds from public servers. We also connect directly to specialized vendor-specific news servers for certain hierarchies (for example, the microsoft.* groups come directly from the Microsoft public news server).

What news server software does Islandnet.com use?

The software we use is called "Grapevine" and it was designed and written in-house. It is a "consolidating and caching news proxy", which means that it combines the resources of several upstream news servers and makes them look like one big news server with more retention and fewer missing articles than typical news servers. At the same time it allows us to offer a full range of over 70,000 newsgroups without the high rate of bandwidth and disk consumption that other news servers require.

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