usenet about to die?

[Darrin Chandler]

Kevin Brown wrote:

>> I've been hearing rumblings from folks I know that Usenet is going to
>> be dropped by most (of not all) of the broadband providers. On top of
>> this, the same providers will simply not tell their customers
>> anything about it.
>>
>> in some research, I came across this link on slashdot:
>>
>> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/18/1510259&from=rss
>>
>> what we need is an intelligent and considered response to this. I use
>> usenet to get answers for linux questions. if usenet goes away, so
>> does access to some of my informational capability. We must consider
>> usenet to be a public resource (much as IRC is and e-mail definitely
>> is) and convince these broadband providers NOT to drop the ball here.
>>
>>
>> comments?
>
>
> Usenet differs from IRC in that if the ISP hosts it, it takes up a
> significant chunk of drive space to hold that data (even a week's
> worth).  Like IRC, there are plenty of places one can go to get usenet
> access other than their ISP (in fact most IRC servers aren't run by an 
> ISP).  Some are free, some aren't.  The ISP might
> incur bandwidth costs for it, but then again, you are paying them for a
> link and probably so is the Usenet provider (e.g. Easynews, etc...).


Even 8-9 years ago, when I was sys admin at a small ISP, most users were 
completely unaware that usenet even existed. The server was a pain to 
keep up, and it sucked up a steady amount of bandwidth. The next ISP I 
worked for used an outside service, and we bought 5 connection blocks. 
Almost no hassle, much cheaper, and only the bandwidth of news actually 
read by customers. Since Google bought Deja and put a "groups" tab at 
the top of their results page... most users are still unaware that it's 
there.

If usenet is important to you then you should write your ISP telling 
them how much you like it, and that if they decide to drop it you'd have 
to sign up with a third party news provider. And that the combined cost 
would then make them uncompetitive. They might listen, or they might not.

-- 
Darrin Chandler
dwchandler at stilyagin.com
http://www.stilyagin.com/