Newsgroup Questions and Answers
Here are the answers to some of the questions you may have about newsgroups.
| How many Usenet groups are there? | |
| There are well over one hundred thousand newsgroups,
but most of them are "junk" or empty groups. Most ISPs carry between
20,000 and 40,000 newsgroups on their servers, although some have as
many as 60,000. A "junk" newsgroup refers to those created as a
prank or joke. |
|
| What is the growth rate on the number of these groups? | |
| Anyone can create a group in alt.*, but not many
ISP's accept control messages for new groups anymore. Too many
hackers, perhaps. |
|
| Why doesn't my ISP carry all of the newsgroups? | |
| Because newsgroups take up space, tremendous amounts
of space. One of the MP3 newsgroups gets about 2gb of traffic per
day, which is roughly 2% of the entire Usenet daily traffic.
Thus, an important consideration for an ISP is how much space do all
of the newsgroups require. |
|
| Why do the binary newsgroup messages seem to expire in a day or two? | |
| It's just a matter of space. Some of the binary
newsgroups are so huge that they must be expired quickly. |
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