OT: The future of USENET?

[C. P. Ghost]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 9:37 PM, Joshua Isom <jrisom at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 3/27/2013 3:25 PM, Walter Hurry wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:12:06 -0400, grarpamp wrote:
>>
>>  Now there are very few, if any, free servers
>>>
>>
>> There are still free news servers available. My ISP bundles usenet,
>> nevertheless I prefer the free one as it's faster and more reliable.
>>
>>
> The last ISP I knew had usenet complained about the bandwidth and storage
> required.


If they carried alt.binaries.*, then yes: it was a legitimate concern.
To carry those groups requires enormous bandwidth, and bandwidth
costs money, a lot of money. Storage isn't really an issue though.., even
with smallish retention periods of 60 days or so.

That's what commercial Usenet providers a la Giganews are for: they
have some very big pipes and the necessary storage infrastructure for
many-years retention, and can pay for all this through their subscribers
fees. I see no problems that regular ISPs dropped Usenet as part of their
standard offering, as long as alternatives such as those Usenet providers
are available for a couple of bucks per month to those who need them.


>  They had a dedicated satellite instead of using their backbone, and only
> cached a couple days.  All the porn and warez has the side affect of wiping
> out the cost benefit.
>

-cpghost.

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