My Usenet Tutorial

[Sinkhead]

Before I begin, this is just one way of doing this, there are many different providers and many different newsreaders to choose from, I'm using the ones I know how to use and the ones I feel comfortable with.

The Usenet provider I use is Usenet-News because of the block accounts they do (buy download quota that lasts until you use it up), but there's a list of other providers here. Most providers sell accounts that renew every month and have a download limit (eg. you pay £5 a month for 20GB download allowance per month)[*]Get an account. This is the bit I can't really help you with (much). You could go for a paid account (fastest and generally best) or one your ISP provides. If you try this out using your ISP's Usenet you may have a bad experience (downloads missing, or slow, or corrupted). Paid servers are nearly always better.
[*]Get a newsreader. By far the most popular for Windows is NewsLeecher and I think it's great. I've tried a few others but none of them really stand up to NewsLeecher. I will be using it in this tutorial. Download the demo and either buy a license key or... you know... But buy it if you think it's good (like I did). If you're not using NewsLeecher then the rest of the tutorial won't be much use to you, and it's my favourite, so you should get it

[*]Open NewsLeecher
[*]Click the 'Manager' tab
[*]Click 'Add' at the top of the left-hand column
[*]Fill in all the details, you have to get these from your provider. Make sure to check the 'Server requires login' box and fill in the information if it's a paid provider. Your ISP account probably won't need this unless it says so specifically.
[*]You may be wondering what value to put in the 'Connections' box. This allows NewsLeecher to have more than one connection to a server. For example, with my provider I get around 120KB/s per connection, but my broadband connection can handle a maximum of around around 750KB/s, so I make 6 connections to the server to get the best speed. Any more connections and it wouldn't do any good, it just wastes connections that other users could use, so just use the number you need and no more.
[*]Press 'OK' to save this information, the server should now appear in the left-hand column on the 'Manager' tab and be in the bottom right-hand section.
[*]Now press 'Options' on the bar at the top.
[*]Click 'Connection' on the left hand-column of this window
[*]You should adjust these values as you see fit, I have mine so it automatically disconnects from the server after 5 minutes of inactivity (nothing downloading) and I change the bottom section so I am automatically reconnected to the server after 30 seconds of nothing happening (sometimes the connections hang for no reason, this resets them automatically which fixes the problem). Even if you're not having any problems you should change this value, you don't want to leave a really big file downloading then come back and find them only half-downloaded because of this problem!
[*]Click 'Download' in the left-hand column
[*]Choose the folder in which you want your downloads to be placed
[*]Change the 'Pause if disk space gets below...' value if you like. I have a separate (small) hard drive for download before I unRAR them, so I make this value quite small as it's a small hard drive.
[*]In the left-hand column under 'Download', click 'NZB Files'
[*]Change these values to what suits you best, I have it so NewsLeecher is associated with NZB files, which means when I open an NZB file NewsLeecher starts downloading it straight away.
[*]In the left-hand column under 'Download', click 'PAR Files'
[*]Change these values to what you like. It is worth mentioning at this point that PAR(2) files let you repair corrupted downloads fairly easily, I'll explain that in more detail later.
[*]Click 'General' in the left-hand column
[*]Change these values to what you like
[*]Click 'OK' to save these settings and close this window
[*]You're ready to start downloading! Find a Usenet searching site that generates NZB files (like NewzLeech), find the file you want, get the NZB file and open it in NewsLeecher! Look under the 'NZB Files' subheading below for a list of sites.
[*]Your files will appear in the 'Queue' tab and they should be downloading. If they aren't, make sure you are connected to the servers (the big button in the top-left should be indented) and that downloads aren't paused (the 4th button from the left should not be indented)
[*]Happy downloading!I have some points to go into in detail now

NZB Files
Everything posted on Usenet is posted in messages, an NZB file contains 'links' to these messages so the newsreader knows which messages to download. The website I use for searching for files and generating NZB files is NewzLeech but there are more out there, just Google for something like 'Usenet Search NZB'

PAR(2) Files
PAR files are used for repairing files that download incorrectly, or if parts of the download are missing. For more information on PAR(2) files I recommend reading this tutorial.

SFV Files
Most downloads come with an SFV file which can be read by QuickPAR (see above note). They check everything downloaded correctly with no problems.

 

[TPi]

you should probably rephrase the 'get a newsreader' thing, because if someone downloads anything besides newsleecher the rest of the tutorial is kind of specific to the software. also its a .sfv file. nice tutorial though.

usenet offers a huge variety of files and information at really nice speeds, it just takes a bit to set up.

 

[enigmaindex]

Thanks for the tutorial sinkhead, thinking of getting this Usenet and that helped me understand how it works alot. Thanks.

 

[Sinkhead]

you should probably rephrase the 'get a newsreader' thing, because if someone downloads anything besides newsleecher the rest of the tutorial is kind of specific to the software. also its a .sfv file. nice tutorial though.Â

 usenet offers a huge variety of files and information at really nice speeds, it just takes a bit to set up.

Thanks!

I corrected it.

 

[JPH]

Oh, nice review Sinkhead.
I get my questionable files a different method...but this one I may do, now.
Thanks Sinky.

 

[Sinkhead]

Oh, nice review Sinkhead.
I get my questionable files a different method...but this one I may do, now.
Thanks Sinky.

Tell me the method and I'll tell you why Usenet is better

 

[Fiddy101]

Oh, nice review Sinkhead.
I get my questionable files a different method...but this one I may do, now.
Thanks Sinky.

Tell me the method and I'll tell you why Usenet is better

I steal it.

 

[Anakir]

Thanks for the tutorial. But you do you know a similar guide where it helps the users on how to use NewsBin? I have that instead.

 

[Murdock]

Before I begin, this is just one way of doing this, there are many different providers and many different newsreaders to choose from, I'm using the ones I know how to use and the ones I feel comfortable with.

The Usenet provider I use is Usenet-News because of the block accounts they do (buy download quota that lasts until you use it up), but there's a list of other providers here. Most providers sell accounts that renew every month and have a download limit (eg. you pay £5 a month for 20GB download allowance per month)

I would advise people to get an Fair Use/Unlimited account as one Wii game is about 4-5GB. Without much shovelware, you'd want to download, let's say, 4 Wii games a month? That'd be 20GB already, without other things you might want to download (MP3s, PC Games, DS Games, etcetera). If you do so, you'll reach the 20GB limit way too fast and you should get an account without a download limit (starting at 7.50EUR in Holland).

Otherwise, nice tutorial

Anakir, altough a bit late, you might want to check out this and this tutorial.

 

[DespizingU]

I'd recommend the Giganews Platinum Package. It's $25 a month and it's unlimited. It's the best in my opinion. Also, Newzbin is by far the best archiver I've used so far. But...it costs money(very little), and it just went invite only a little while back. So you can't just freely make an account anymore. There are many free archivers out there though.

Pretty good tut Sinkhead. Using newsgroups really is way better torrenting. For one thing there's no seeding. So there's no having to keep a good ratio. Plus the whole security thing. Using newsgroups is way safer than using torrents. Also, downloads go way faster with newsgroups. You'll max out your connection on every download.

But then again, it's sometimes hard to find older downloads. So private trackers are better for that I think. Plus using bittorent is free. So there's pros and cons for both methods.

I've never tried NewsLeecher(i'll give it a go now), GrabIt is what I've been using. It's pretty simple.

 

[Octagon3k]

Currently I'm using Ngroups. It's pretty cheap (I got in on a 30 quarterly sale), and I always max out my connection. No more bit torrent for me, unless it's somethis specific I need and can't find from a year + ago.

 

[FAST6191]

http://www.usenettools.net/ISP.htm

A nice site detailing what ISPs have as their usenet provider. In a shocking turn of events BT seems to use giganews Euro servers (3 connections and just over 100kbytes/sec) but as far as free/ISP goes that is unreal. I have been reading though some of the cheaper options do not get it.

 

[jeklnoo]

linux is way better for usenet downloading than windows, thanks to a little program called 'hellanzb'. all i have to do is drop a .nzb file in my 'queue' directory, and it will automatically download the files, if any parts get corrupted it automatically downloads the PARs & repairs it, then when it's done it automatically extracts the .rar's for me. doesn't get any easier than that

 

[coolbho3000]

linux is way better for usenet downloading than windows, thanks to a little program called 'hellanzb'. all i have to do is drop a .nzb file in my 'queue' directory, and it will automatically download the files, if any parts get corrupted it automatically downloads the PARs & repairs it, then when it's done it automatically extracts the .rar's for me. doesn't get any easier than that

http://www.altbinz.net/

Altbinz does the same exact thing. All you have to do is give it an NZB and you'll have a full working ISO in a few hours. No PARing, or unRARing needed.

I was so illiterate in Linux computing that I actually ran it in WINE to get my goods.

 

[Alerek]

I'm not your buddy, guy!

(I'm aware post is off-topic, responding to sinkhead's av change

)

This guide is excellent, and I'm glad I decided to follow it. I have everything I could ever want from interwebs so much faster....Its really weird, but very cool that I don't have overnight downloads anymore. And I have noone to thank but sink

 

[ShadowXP]

Just used this tutorial to set up my Usenet account with Usenet-News

Thanks sinkhead!

 

[jeronz]

I know this is a semi-old thread so sorry for bumping it, but thanks for the tutorial. I now have a new interest in usenet (knew about it before but it seemed too complicated). Theres another good tutorial that I chanced upon which is quite comprehensive: http://www.slyck.com/ng.php

 

[Panzer Tacticer]

For those unaware (no idea how many that might be) Newzbin is a great indexer, but no longer takes new accounts (last time I checked). There are likely others, but I always hear newzbin referred to when mentioning the best. Glad I have the account.

Giganews is considered best of the newshosts by just about anybody. 25 bucks gets you unlimited where the word unlimited actually means just that (how refreshing). And if you sign up properly, you get your newsleecher key free.

If you have broadband, and you actually like to download, and you are not using the above, you likely need to re examine your costs.

Great tutorial.

 

[jeronz]

Just checked http://www.newzbin.com/ isn't taking new members. But you can get an account on their new 'V3' website but you need an invitation.

I just found out that my isp has a usenet server but it doesn't seem to have a very good retention rate

Or would that be due to the newsreader? Most of the nzb files I try to open that is older than a couple days says file not found. And when I try connect to popular alt.binaries groups and get the file lists its very short. I guess I'll need to try another server.

 

[MC DUI]

Thanks for the tutorial sinkhead!

I just changed ISP's as the one I changed to are offering free giganews and astranews usage.
Tested it out last night and maxed my connection nicely!

One RAR seemed to come down missing some info so I'll be having a play with QuickPAR tonight to see how that all works.

Thanks again.