Alioth's Journal: Loss of USENET access

For the best part of the last two years, I've accessed Usenet news by running slrn on my dedicated server, hosted at ThePlanet in Dallas. The server 'news.theplanet.com' happily served me via NNTP.

Today, that's stopped, with a 'no permission' error. I think they may have dropped the service. I submitted a trouble ticket to find out, but I expect a reply "we no longer offer that service". It's getting really, really hard to find a free NNTP feed - something that used to be routinely provided by your ISP.

I like Usenet. I really, really don't want to have to use Google Groups to access it - I'll lose all the handy scoring features built into slrn and besides, web interfaces suck.

Anyone know of a way I can get free or low cost Usenet access via NNTP that's reliable? I don't subscribe to any binary groups, I just use rec.aviation.*, alt.sysadmin.recovery and a couple of uk.* groups (so I'd like the latter, some servers don't carry all country groups)

You can have access to my feed...

[TinaMarie]

I'm just running leafnode now, but I can give you a shell account you can access it from, or if you'll set up INN for me you can have a feed off that. :)

Complain

[HTH NE1]

You could try complaining to your ISP about the loss of value of their service. When my provider dropped their NNTP service, they paid for my access to a third-party pay service.

At least, they did until I decided that particular service wasn't satisfying my needs and paid for my own with another USENET provider. Then my ISP silently dropped their patronage of that service.

That put a new damper on a project I wanted to work on: an NNTP proxy that would take multiple USENET feeds and merge them into an alte

USENET

[Tet]

Clara.net offer a full USENET feed (including UK groups). If you don't require any of the binary groups, then the basic 30 quid/year package should be sufficient.

news.individual.net

[turg]

news.individual.net -- I've used them off and on over the past 5 years or so and they've always rocked. 10 euros per year.