Anchordudes Usenet Newsgroup Server FAQ

There may be 50 or even 100 providers offering Usenet service - but in reality there are only 5 - 8 back end NNTP Newsgroup Server providers.  Nearly every company you see advertised out there is simply buying big blocks of access from those usenet providers and then re-selling it in smaller chunks to end users.  The resellers are responsible for their own billing, user management, and support.

Most of the back end providers also sell service directly to end users - notably Giganews, Highwinds (Usenetserver, Newshosting) and AstraWeb. In general, we recommend signing up for service through one of the actual providers. Why?  Because the biggest complaint from usenet users is that they get the run-around when they have problems with resellers.  It's either the billing system, the access control system, the backend, the backbone, or the connection between them all.  With resellers it seems it's always someone else's fault, and they can't give you a refund.  Resellers must also manage that "huge chunk" that they've bought from the back end usenet provider, and they often do that by throttling back the speed of their users as they approach their own internal monthly quotas.  But when you buy from the provider directly, there's only one party who can take the blame - the party you're actually paying.

The following list isn't updated too often, as it's a bear to research, test, and categorize all the providers.  What we do is try to identify all the active (and inactive) companies offering newsgroup server access, track down the actual server addresses they use, and figure out where their data is actually coming from.  It's a bit imprecise, in that we're relying on IP addresses and IP proximities to identify common providers. In some cases a reseller is channeling access through a separate router in a different location (which opens the door to additional failures by the way), but most are pointing their users directly to the back-end providers' servers by simply attaching their own domain names to their providers' farm ID's.  In general, if we see the first 3 sets of numbers in an IP series are the same for multiple addresses, we assume they are pointing to the same back end farm or group.  You may see the same reseller name under multiple groups or even back-end usenet provider's lists - typically that's because the reseller offers access to different servers depending on which plan you buy from them.

For Giganews and Highwinds you will see we've broken the resellers into server groups, as these providers have multiple farms in the US and worldwide.  Some are high-retention with many levels of redundancy, others have lower quality standards and are more likely to see downtime - but the cost charged to the reseller is lower so the reseller can offer a lower price to the end users.  Never has the statement "you get what you pay for" been more true.  So be careful which group a reseller buys from before you decide to sign up with them - just because they buy from Highwinds doesn't mean you'll get the same quality or uptime as buying from one of Highwind's two companies directly.

Finally - you'll notice the Dead File at the end of the list.  These are resellers that have gone out of business or been bought out.  For many of these ex-resellers, they left users who bought block or multi-month contracts hanging in the breeze.  It's a tough business and profit margins continue to decline - we expect the Dead File to continue to grow as times get tighter...

Giganews Servers:

In our opinion, Giganews is the strongest back end newsgroup provider.  They've been around for 7+ years usign the same business model with nearly flawless uptime while consistently leading the industry in retention - typically having 20 - 30 days worth of binary messages more than any other provider and store text-only articles for over 2000 days on their flagship servers.    They've also been very careful about who they allow to re-sell access to their servers - Powerusenet.com, Usenet.net, Supernews, and Rhino Newsgroups, although the retention through the Giganews premium services are significantly longer than on their other services.  Most of Giganews resellers use a common billing and user management system that is very robust, so we have no qualms recommending people sign up for Usenet through Powerusenet, Usenet.net or Supernews.

Group 1
giganews EU
British Telecom (ISP)

Group 2
giganews US
powerusenet.com
rhinonewsgroups.com
speakeasy.net (ISP) ??
usenet.net

Group 3
Airnews.net
Simonnews.com Std
Supernews.com
Earthlink.net (ISP)

Group 4
Tigernews?

Highwinds (Newshosting, Usenetserver)

is the Pac-man of the Usenet industry.  They've been gobbling up Newgroup Server companies over the past few years - and making it easy for other companies to re-sell access to their back end usenet services.  Consequently, there are more companies using Highwinds back end than any other back end. Typically, each of the Highwinds farms/groups is actually the farm that belonged to one of the companies they bought - Newshosting, Usenetserver, Each group has different retention, completion, and redundancy levels too.

Group 1
Easynews US
Forte

Group 2
Easynews EU

Group 3
Newshosting.com

Group 4
Usenetserver.com
flashnewsgroups.com
newsguy.com
nntpjunkie.com

Group 5
alt.binaries.com EU
newsdemon.com EU
newshosting.com EU
newsrazor.net EU
ngroups.net
simonnews.com
sonic-news.com - EU
uncensorednewsfeed.com - EU
usenet.se
usenet-news.net - EU

Group 6
buzzardnews.com
maximumusenet.com
newsdemon.com (Econ)
thundernews.com
titannews.com
usenetguide.com

Group 7
alt.binaries.com US east
alt.binaries.com US west
bubbanews.com
cox.net (ISP)
newsdemon.com (Prem)
newsgroupdirect.com Std
newsrazor.net Std SSL
ngroups.net
onlynews.com
rushnetwork.net

Group 7 Cont
sonic-news.com
teranews.com
thenewsgroups.com
ultrafeed.com
uncensorednewsfeed.com 
usenet-access.com
usenet-news.net
yottanews.com

Astraweb:

One of the few remaining independents in the Usenet industry that has been able to keep up with the retention of the big guys.  They don't buy from anyone else, and they don't resell access to their newsgroup servers either.  Unfortunately, we don't know much about them - they do have hiccups in their service from time to time - sometimes their website even goes off line, but teir retention is about in line with Highwinds, and they have a loyal following in the Usenet community.

News-Service:

A Netherlands based usenet provider. From the reports we've gotten from users, their completion is quite good, which is no surprise since Amsterdam is pretty much the biggest single hub for usenet peering.  Speed is pretty good if you're in Europe, but can be a bit slow from the US.

Newsreader:

All 7 of these usenet services point to the same news server farm, with newsreader.com being the primary site.  We do know they've been around a long time as a second tier player - at least 5 years.  Some people have have had good luck with the newsgroup providers that use NR's servers, while others have reported to us that binary newsgroups like the MP3 group are often very incomplete or have short retention.

newsreader.com
uncensorednewsfeed.com

NNTPServer:

NNTP Server used to have a large number of resellers, but seems to have fewer and fewer providers using its newsgroup servers as of late. They run their own custom news server software and  sometimes deviate from standards causing problems with some newsreader software.  They are known for good completion rates, which was a differentiator a couple years ago, but now almost everyone has high completion rates.

sonicnews.com

???:

We don't know much about this nntp usenet service - we're researching it...

Other Independents:

With a few exceptions, most of these are relatively small usenet companies.  With less capital and monthly income to fall back on, they have less redundancy in their equipment and connections, and have a hard time recovering from crashes and hardware failures.  There are a few companies that stand out because they have better funding or have been around for a long time:
Altopia has been around for eons, and while they aren't much for retention of multipart binaries, their pricing is somewhat attractive and they've been pretty reliable over the past 2 or 3 years.
Eweka is a Dutch firm with pretty good newsgroup retention and completion.  Everything is in Dutch though, and worse yet, access to their servers is blocked from many countries.  Try a tracert to newsreader1.eweka.nl before signing up to make sure you can access them.

Web Thumbnail Services

There are a number of companies that sit somewhere between a standard NNTP newsgroup service that requires PC Newsreader software, and a regular HTML website with thumbnails of pictures and movies.  Almost all have full uncensored access.  Most of these services have significantly less retention (20 - 80 days) but they save you from having to use a program on your own computer and download headers before seleting articles - but for those who prefer a straight-forward web-only interface, these services are great.

A special note: Easynews normally viewed as a regular NNTP usenet service, but they also have a web-based preview tool that lets you select articles and attachments and then group them into an esy to download ZIP file.  It's not as flashy, but in many ways it's actually more useful.

skinvideo.com
ucache

The Dead File

We've been watching over this industry for 8 or 9 years now, and we've seen newsgroup server providers come and go.  Some have even been "resurrected" multiple times.  But the final word is that the list of usenet companies that have gone by the wayside is long, and will continue to get longer as times get tighter and competition continues to lower end-user prices.  Be careful about going for the low-price leader as it's quite possible they'll be on the list below someday too.