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A comment on I've skimmed 66520 newsgroups trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020). Parent comment

Re:I've skimmed 66520 newsgroups trying to find some life on... by est on Tuesday July 25, 2023 @05:21AM (#36859881)
> usenet was already distributed

From my limited understanding, it's not "distributed" as you think

It's "distributed" among ISPs. It's like one of the [email protected] free emails,

To run a usenet server, you need a server with public IP with TCP port 119 open. It's like running your own email service.

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Re:I've skimmed 66520 newsgroups trying to find some life on... by NoGravitas on Tuesday July 25, 2023 @05:38AM (#36859986)
Decentralized would probably be a better word than distributed.
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Re:I've skimmed 66520 newsgroups trying to find some life on... by throwaway847t on Tuesday July 25, 2023 @10:05AM (#36862425)
Each instance could also choose which groups to distribute. Many ISPs didn't carry all groups (such as binary groups and groups in other languages) to save money, or due to the content itself (porn, warez, MP3). Sometimes they would have delays because some groups were only synced a few times a day.

This created a market for NNTP servers that provided full content for a monthly fee and sometimes even with a spam filter

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