Current top myths about Usenet

[Paul W. Schleck]

1. Google owns Usenet

2. When Google Groups stops archiving Usenet articles later this month,
Usenet will go away

3. Existing active Usenet discussion newsgroups must move to another
forum now, or be lost

4. There is no discussion on Usenet anymore

5. There are no moderated newsgroups on Usenet

6. Usenet costs a lot of money, and is technically difficult, to access

[Steve Bonine]

And which mythical god has anointed these as "current" and "top"?

[Sn!pe]

If indeed it is the real PWS writing above, he is the person responsible
for swamping rec.radio.* with reposted blogs to the exclusion of real
discussion, thereby killing that set of groups.

--
^Ï^. Sn!pe, PA, FIBS - Professional Crastinator

My pet rock Gordon just is.

[D]

google groups users may not realize the fundamental differences between
the autonomous/decentralized usenet, versus the proprietary/centralized
alphabet/google corporation; the isolation of google groups from usenet
provides incentive for multitudes of google's users to seek free usenet
news servers, apps, and websites, that will help them to stay connected

[D]

On Wed, 14 Feb 2024, Paul W. Schleck wrote:

> 6. Usenet costs a lot of money, and is technically difficult, to access

Good evening Paul,

How much compute, network and storage to you need to run a news server?
I thought about trying it out for myself under the protective "roof" of
my own company. That way I can also deduct the cost from my profits
while being of some use to others. =)

Best regards,
Daniel

[Scott Dorsey]

In article <uqim60$2mrlk$1...@dont-email.me>, Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com> wrote:
>Paul W. Schleck wrote:
>> 1. Google owns Usenet
>>
>> 2. When Google Groups stops archiving Usenet articles later this month,
>> Usenet will go away

(etc.)

>And which mythical god has anointed these as "current" and "top"?

Google, no doubt.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Paul W. Schleck]

Daniel,

Reading the INN server documentation, the answer appears to be, "It
depends:"

https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/inn/


Also asking some friends and colleagues who run personal NNTP servers or
even multi-user ISP's/NSP's, the answer is also, "It depends," but they
offer some helpful details.


One friend who operates a personal NNTP server writes:

"The best thing I can offer is this:

http://panix.com/v-colo/plans.html

I run my news server with a full-ish, non-binary feed on a V-C 2 package
from Panix. That's a 6GB RAM system, 10-20GB of disk space, and the
network isn't an issue at all; and I use the machine for other purposes
too (email, personal login, etc). This would obviously need to be more
robust if the server was used by lots and lots of people, but I don't
feel like co-location would be a significant problem nowadays.

The hard part, IMO, is the expertise of getting everything set up,
getting feeds, and keeping it running."


Another colleague who runs an NNTP server for a national ISP/NSP writes:

"The answer is too dependent on the details - how many users, how much
they use, and what groups you want to carry. But... that's probably only
true if you're trying to do things at scale for thousands of users.

FYI, we have one feeds machine and two readers. When I architected this
originally, it was for load management. I'd still do it that way,
because it's a commercial service and because machines are cheap. But
it's drastically overkill for any lesser demand, and waaaay more
capacity than we need.

For our machines, the load is trivial. Here's average disk i/o stats on
the active reader machine since boot (~30 days):

reader1# iostat -y
device read KB/t r/s MB/s write KB/t w/s MB/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t wtime time
ld0 20.24 0 0.00 24.37 5 0.12 0.0 0.0 0.00 0.41 0.00 0.00
ld1 3.99 0 0.00 63.78 0 0.00 0.0 0.0 1.95 13.93 0.00 0.00
ld2 20.57 0 0.01 17.89 4 0.08 0.0 0.0 0.01 0.50 0.00 0.00
ld3 4.20 1 0.00 4.70 0 0.00 0.0 0.0 0.00 0.61 0.00 0.00
ld4 62.14 0 0.01 27.53 0 0.00 0.0 0.0 0.00 3.48 0.00 0.00
ld5 62.13 0 0.01 27.50 0 0.00 0.0 0.0 0.00 4.23 0.00 0.00

The only stats that matter (given the low load) are r/s and w/s. As you
can see, it's... basically no disk load at all. Even spinning rust
wouldn't be challenged. But why bother with that? Buy a used SATA 256GB
or 512GB MLC SSD, and you're probably set for life.

Now, the thing to remember is, you can make the wrong choice configuring
your server, and that would make the machine problematic even with
SSDs. Do not use file-per-article under any circumstances. Use cyclical
buffers, which are an option in INNd and may be the default now. If
you're using some other news server, make sure you do the same.

In 1995 the load was enormous. In 2000 it was even worse. But by then
cycbuffs were a thing, and they solved the problem. Nowadays, volume is
much lower, absent binaries, and aside from dealing with spam issues,
it's not all that much.

As for network and CPU - they're both just as trivial, except for daily
processing, which happens overnight and takes fairly little time.

So the short answer is: As long as you do it right, you could probably
do it on a Raspberry Pi."


Hope this helps. If you wish, I could put you directly in touch with
these individuals for further questions.

--
Paul W. Schleck
psch...@panix.com

[Scott Dorsey]

Paul W. Schleck <psch...@panix.com> wrote:
>"The best thing I can offer is this:
>
> http://panix.com/v-colo/plans.html
>
>I run my news server with a full-ish, non-binary feed on a V-C 2 package
>from Panix. That's a 6GB RAM system, 10-20GB of disk space, and the
>network isn't an issue at all; and I use the machine for other purposes
>too (email, personal login, etc). This would obviously need to be more
>robust if the server was used by lots and lots of people, but I don't
>feel like co-location would be a significant problem nowadays.

Why would they do this when Panix already provides a news server which
is very well-run? I cannot say enough good things about Panix's news
service or about Panix in general for that matter.

[Tim Skirvin]

klu...@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) writes:

>> I run my news server with a full-ish, non-binary feed on a V-C
>> 2 package from Panix. That's a 6GB RAM system, 10-20GB of disk
>> space, and the network isn't an issue at all; and I use the machine
>> for other purposes too (email, personal login, etc). This would
>> obviously need to be more robust if the server was used by lots
>> and lots of people, but I don't feel like co-location would be a
>> significant problem nowadays.

> Why would they do this when Panix already provides a news server which
> is very well-run?

Habit, mostly.

- Tim Skirvin (tski...@killfile.org) (He, Him, His)
--
https://forge.puppetlabs.com/tskirvin Skirv's Puppet Modules

[Paul W. Schleck]

Kind of like that punchline answer to the sitcom question:

"Why don't people use their gifted ice cream machines?"

"Because people eventually find out that you can buy ice cream in
stores."

(Probably also a good working definition of "hobby.")

Another Internet colleague just replied to tell me that the
news.software.nntp newsgroup probably has more experts with setting up
news servers, and might be a better venue for Daniel to ask specific
technical questions.

[immibis]

1. It's full of spam.
2. It's full of trolls.
3. The above cannot be eliminated from any distributed system.

[Scott Dorsey]

No, I think the spam can be removed to a great extent. Perhaps not completely
eliminated, but reduced to the point where it is nearly invisible.

[rek2 hispagatos]

On 2024-02-18, Mr Ön!on <on...@anon.invalid> wrote:

> [shakes fist]
>

With google gone most spam will be over. finally...

Happy Hacking
ReK2

--
- {gemini,https}://{,rek2.}hispagatos.org - mastodon: @re...@hispagatos.space
- [https|gemini]://2600.Madrid - https://hispagatos.space/@rek2
- https://keyoxide.org/A31C7CE19D9C58084EA42BA26C0B0D11E9303EC5