rws@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (r.w.stubblefield) (08/25/89)
I have recently recommended USENET to some folks that I have exchanged e-mail with. Some of them have asked me how to get access to USENET. Are there any general guidelines I can give them on how to obtain USENET access? Two such folks are on arpanet; another is on BITNET. Bob Stubblefield r.w.stubblefield@att.com
bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells) (08/27/89)
In article <3337@cbnewsh.ATT.COM> rws@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (r.w.stubblefield) writes:
: I have recently recommended USENET to some folks that I have
: exchanged e-mail with. Some of them have asked me how to get
: access to USENET. Are there any general guidelines I can give them
: on how to obtain USENET access? Two such folks are on arpanet;
: another is on BITNET.
They have several choices. Among them:
1) They may already have Usenet access and just don't know it.
They should check with their system administrators before
doing anything else.
2) Find a site that is willing to let them sign on and read the
news. There are commercial sites that do this; they may also
be able to find a friendly site locally.
3) Set up a Usenet connection on a system they have access to.
This may be a nontrivial effort and requires finding a site
that is willing to forward the news. Again, there are
commercial sites that will do this; most prominent being uunet.
4) If they want to read and post to a very low volume newsgroup
or newsgroups, they may be able to find a site that is willing
to mail news to them and post received mail.
If all else fails, they can send me e-mail and I'll see what I can
do. My site is available for any of the last three options.
In any case, *please* have them read the postings in
news.announce.newusers before they post anything.
---
Bill { uunet | novavax | ankh | sunvice } !twwells!bill
bill@twwells.comepsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott) (08/27/89)
In article <3337@cbnewsh.ATT.COM> rws@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (r.w.stubblefield) writes: >I have recently recommended USENET to some folks that I have >exchanged e-mail with. Some of them have asked me how to get >access to USENET. Are there any general guidelines I can give them >on how to obtain USENET access? Two such folks are on arpanet; >another is on BITNET. There's a standard answer to "how do I get access to X"--either you find someone else who already has it, or you get it yourself. For the former, start with the lists of Public Access UNIX sites posted to pubnet,nixpub,comp.misc,alt.bbs. If there isn't one near you, consider subscribing to Telenet's PC Pursuit service (or similar), or one of the services with PDN access (Portal, Well). Internet sites have it made--nothing beats NNTP's performance for feeding news. BITNET (snicker, chuckle, gag) people are probably S.O.L. (not to diminish the fine efforts of the PSUVM folk)--while the software exists, BITNET does not have the capacity to redistribute a full news feed or anything close to it, except between adjacent nodes, without seriously disrupting normal communication. Most BITNET sites are better off using a Telebit to exchange news the old-fashioned way, or getting access to decent network technology. -=EPS=-