Exploring the Early Day of Internet

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 06:10:47 +0800

One day, I was setting up my Mozilla Thunderbird to connect to my SMTP server. I saw a tab called “Newsgroup”, I knew it was a thing back a few years ago when I set my Thunderbird for the first time before, but I never really explored it. After some googling, it turned out that Newsgroup (or usenet) was a BBS like system where user can do discussion, share files. It was like a forum, but with CLI interface.

The origin of Usenet

In the 1970s, when browser and WWW was not a thing until 10 years later, ARPANET and TCP/IP were new, people used modems to dial into a server to read and post messages. This method of communication wasn’t very efficient as it was a Peer-2-Peer connection, so people started thinking of a method that allow for a decentralized, distributed communication system. This is where Usenet comes in.

Usenet was created by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979. The concept of Usenet is quite simple:

you connect to a Usenet server (Usually your ISP (in the past) or a provider)
You post a message to a newsgroup
The message is then distributed to other Usenet servers via Peering.

How Usenet works

Since the Usenet is a decentralised system, unlike web forum where you go to a specific website to read it, The Usenet has Everything. Therefore, The Usenet is divided into each topic, and each topic is under a hierarchy. For example, comp is a hierarchy for computer related stuff, alt.* is a hierarchy for alternative stuff etc.

September that never ends

One of the most famous events in Usenet history is the September that never ends. In 1993, AOL started to provide Usenet access to their user. This led to many new user (usually from university students that gain access to usenet for the first time) flooding Usenet. However, due to its increasing popularity, newsgroup spam, trolling and other problem began to appear.

The decline of Usenet

In the early 2000s, Usenet started to decline. The rise of web forums, social media and other platforms began to take over Usenet. Spam, flame wars, trolling, and piracy started to became more and more common because Usenet was not moderated. More and more Usenet group eventually moved to web forums.

In 2001, Google created a Usenet archive and offered Usenet services called Google Groups where you could read / send Usenet posts. However, this intention backfired as the majority of posts in Google Groups just spam and meaningless posts, although there are still some useful information in there as Google archived the entire Usenet and provided a search engine for it.

A few years later, In 2005, AOL dropped direct access to Usenet to focus on BBS, which caused a lot of users move to web forums, other users moved to other Usenet providers like Google Groups.

Usenet in 2025

In 2025, Usenet is still here, According to Eternal September - Daily Usenet Report, As of writing (2025-1-7) there are around 5000 new feeds (excluding spam and binaries) per day. If we include spam/binary groups, the daily volume would be 275TiB, Usenet is still a place where you can find information that you can’t find on the web due to its decentralised nature.

As of 22 February 2024, Google Groups has stopped providing Usenet access, Google has shutdown its NNTP server, the archive will still be there but there will be no more new usernet content.

Accessing Usenet

Now, back to my Thunderbird, I decided to visit Usenet to see how it looks like. After searching for few hours on how to access the Usenet, I found out that most of the Usenet servers require a subscription plan, and I thought “Why can’t i just host my own Usenet server and peer with others?”, little did I know, setting up a Usenet server in 2025 without a very in-depth knowledge is virtually impossible due to the size, bandwidth and the complexity of the system. You can use Leafnode to create a small Usenet server for personal use, but setting up without any documentation is difficult and it would not worth the effort.

But I don’t want to pay for a Usenet, so I looked for a free Usenet server, and I found Usenet Farm. Usenet Farm allows you to access Usenet with a 10GB trial, But i wanted to access Usenet for free without trial, so I found Eternal September, a free Usenet server that allows you to access Usenet for free with Text-only access. I signed up and started exploring the usenet.

Setting up NNTP client

To access Usenet, you need an NNTP client, I used Mozilla Thunderbird to access Usenet. To setup Eternal September in Thunderbird, some additional steps are required like focing Thunderbird to always authenticate with the server, and setting up the server to use SSL. Once set up, i can finally load the list of newsgroups (which actually took me 20 minutes to load because Usenet farm took about a minute and i thought it was broken and wasted 6 hours trying to fix it lol).

Conclusion

After visiting the usenet, there are still some, but very few messages in there after the google group shutdown. Usenet is still a interesting place to lookfor :P (just ignoring like 90% of the spam post after 2005 lol)

Declearation: No referral link, Please correct me if there’s any mistake in this article, thanks :P

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