"Open" NNTP Servers (was Re: Usenet going bye bye)

[Leo Mauler]

--- On Fri, 6/20/08, Luke -Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:

> From: Luke -Jr <luke at dashjr.org>
> Subject: Re: Usenet going bye bye
> To: kclug at kclug.org
> Date: Friday, June 20, 2008, 6:04 PM
> IIRC, there's one ISP that just tells its users to use
> GMail

Back in the mid-1990s I worked for an ISP which had "issues", financial and technical.  They sold a bunch of accounts on the promise of full services, including Usenet, but never quite got around to implementing their own Usenet server.  As I was the lone customer service rep for the startup company, I eventually (mostly out of exasperation) mentioned the NewzBot "Open NNTP Server" website to management, who decided to make that "service" their (un)official ISP news server.

Now there are a number of sites which do "Open NNTP Server Listings", but back then Newzbot (http://www.newzbot.com/) was the only game in town (and currently is one of the few which doesn't have ads).

Here's how they do it: they run a script on the Internet looking for IP addresses which have port 119 open (the NNTP server port).  Then the script checks all those addresses and tries to read message headers and post a message to all of those sites.  Then all of the sites with open NNTP servers are posted on the website's list, divided into "read-only" and "read-and-post" NNTP servers.

Most of those sites are "left the barn door open" type sites, where the administrator is being sloppy with security, though there are a few intentionally open NNTP servers.  Usually an accidental open NNTP server becomes a closed one fairly soon, because people find the accidentally open NNTP server address and leave a big "heads-up" to the system administrator in the system log, in the form of "everyone on the Internet trying to use the same NNTP server".

If you just do the text-only Usenet groups, you may be able to enjoy the free Usenet servers.  Google has a list of websites which are either Newzbot-style webcrawlers or actual free NNTP servers (the latter usually only have the text-only groups, though this site (http://www.nyx.net/~bkraft/) claims there's a California-based free NNTP server with binaries groups), at:

http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Usenet/Public_News_Servers/

TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/4oq74r

Or just go to Google Directory, and go this path through Google Directory:

http://www.google.com/dirhp

Computers > Usenet > Public News Servers