Thread: USENET: How to kick your torrent addiction forever!

Usenet: How to kick your torrent addiction forever!




Usenet: Everyone's heard of it, nobody uses it. This is ridiculous. Not only is it a fantastic way to download—it's not that hard to use. Here's how to drop your torrent habit once and for all, with Usenet.
This point of this guide is to get people acquainted with the basics of Usenet, but if any of you beardy old-timers have any tips, tricks, advice or tearful memories to share about your decades on the 'Net, that party's in the comments. Anyway!
What is Usenet?
I'll spare you a deep historical and technical explanation, because it'd bore you to death, and I'm not the guy to give it: Usenet has been around since the late 70s as one of the bulletin board systems that the first generation of true nerds cut their teeth on. It was designed for discussion, and lived across tons of decentralized servers. For most purposes it's been replaced by the internet as we know it today, but it's still very much alive, albeit with a different face.
You see, somewhere back in the 80s, someone started uploading binary content—files, not words—to Usenet. This was, and in some ways still is, an awkward fit, but it quickly became one of the main uses for the service. Why? Because nobody seemed to care much about regulating it—they still don't, for whatever reason—and because, man, it was fast. These factors made it a perfect refuge for for files of all types, and now the pure amount of stuff available on Usenet rivals—and in a lot of categories, exceeds—the best torrent trackers, which are getting picked off anyway.

Why Do You Want It?
This one's easy: Aside from serving a huge amount of content, Usenet is usually the first place popular downloads show up, and unlike torrents, once they're up, the downloads immediately run at full speed. Speaking of which, it bears repeating: Usenet is extremely fast. Unless your service is absolute crap, you're probably going to max out your broadband connection. Once you've tasted this kind of speed, torrents almost seem silly. And lastly, you don't have to seed, or upload, anything.
For download junkies, Usenet is a wonderland. But it's got a longstanding reputation for being a little tough to get into, so most people don't even give it a shot. This isn't really fair, since Usenet isn't at all hard to use. Here's how to get started:

Choosing a Usenet Service

There was a time when ISPs weren't just cool with Usenet binaries—they actually hosted them. Some still do, but in those rare cases there are usually crippling bandwidth restrictions, throttling measures and all kind of missing content. To mine the Usenet gold you really care about—the alt.binaries content—you're going to need to buy access. Sorry! Usenet isn't a peer-to-peer service, so you've got to pay someone, somewhere for all that bandwidth and storage. The good news is, you can get away with spending about $15 a month for unlimited, unthrottled access. If you're not comfortable with this, get your feet wet with a free trial, like GigaNews', or just buy a one-off download pass, good for a few gigabytes.
There are a couple things to look for in a Usenet provider, but most major, reputable services are roughly comparable. Retention is a word you'll see a lot: Usenet servers, given the pure volume of content they get loaded with, have to clear themselves out every once in a while, meaning that files have a limited lifespan. Retention is just a term to describe how long a provider can afford to keep uploads, and the longer they can hold onto uploads, the more files they have. You shouldn't settle for much less that 300-day retention nowadays.
Providers also advertise how many parallel connections to their servers they permit at one time. More=faster, but past about ten concurrent downloads, the numbers really stop meaning anything, unless you're on some kind of insanely fast commercial connection, in which case WHAT ARE YOU DOING DOWNLOADING FILEZ, HMM?
Lastly, there are download limits. This should be more obvious, but just just in case: This represents how much you can download from your provider in a given month. This one's all you, so if you really don't think you'll break 10GB a month, only buy 10GB a month. Once you really start to kick your torrent habit, though, you might be surprised at what you're capable of.
I've been using Astraweb for years—they're cheap, and fast enough to saturate my connection—so the rest of the tutorial will assume you've chosen them. If you've gone with another provider, the only difference will be your server settings, which they'll give you after you sign up. Remember: Usenet servers are all meshed together, so no matter who your provider is, the available downloads should be about the same, at least for as long as your provider keeps them around.

Choosing a Client

As with torrents, there's some pretty weird stuff going on behind the scenes with Usenet. As I mentioned earlier, adding binary files to Usenet was kind of an afterthought, which means the procedure for downloading them kind of complicated, at least on the back end. For example: Usenet binaries have relatively low size limits, so any larger content—movies, software, etc—needs to be split up into lots of small pieces. You know how sometimes a torrent comes in about about 40 .RAR files that have to be rejoined once they're downloaded? That's because it came from Usenet, where files can't be much more than 20MB. So, your client's got to be able to handle all these group downloads, and preferably join them together for you automatically.
There a plenty of Usenet clients out there, but most of them are either don't support the kind of file downloading we want—your email app probably falls into this category—are command-line-based, or cost money. I'm done spending your dollars for today, so I'll point everyone toward the only free, cross-platform Usenet binary client I know of, and one I've been using for quite a long time: It's called SABnzbd. The rest of the guide will be based around this app, though you can try to follow along with some other free alternatives if you like. Mac OSers may want to try Hellanzb (GUI version linked) and Windows folks could go with Alt.binz. But SABnzbd is, to put it bluntly, pretty great.
SABnzbd runs a local web interface, so it'll look the same no matter what OS you're on. Here's how to get started.
1.) Download and install the client (For Windows, it's an installer like any other app; for Mac OS, it's a .DMG)
2.) Start it up. It should open a browser window to a control panel-esque page, clearly label as SABnzbd.
3.) Navigate to the "Config" Page and click "Servers"


4.) Enter the server settings your Usenet provider gave you after signup (Astraweb's at left)

5.) Staying in the "Config" page, click "Folders"
6.) Choose where you want downloaded files to go, and where you want the temporary files to live before they're finished downloading.
7.) Choose a "Watched" folder. This how SABnzbd will know what you want it to download. Make it a place that's easy for you to save to, from a browser.

That's it! Now just leave SABnzbd running, and we'll start to explore Usenet. Feel free to play around with more of SABnzbd's options, like the themes, one of which is featured on this article's top image, but follow this general rule: if it's not totally obvious to you what an option changes, you should probably ignore it. The only thing you might have to worry about outwith this setup procedure is enabling an SSL connection, if your ISP is throttling your download speeds. More on that here.

Finding Those Files

Now that you've got access to Usenet, and the right tools to draw those sweet, sweet files from it, it's time to dive in. Since Usenet in the raw is an incomprehensible mess, something has emerged called the Newzbin, or NZB standard. NZBs are a lot like torrent files: They're little pointers that contain information about all the little scattered pieces of a given download, and which give clients like SABnzbd everything they need to make downloading look seamless to users. To "explore Usenet" is really to explore indexes of NZBs, and to do that, you need a good search engine. The best is at Newzbin, from the people who invented the NZB format. Unfortunately, it too is paid, and currently invite-only. Instead, you should use one of the decent free alternatives, like NZBs.org, Binsearch or Newszleech. Searching takes some practice, but once you get a sense of how people name stuff 'round these parts, it's a breeze.
Once you find your NZB, download it to the directory you marked "Watch" in SABnzbd. Alternately, you can just download it to wherever you want, and add it to SABnzbd at the program's homepage, under "Add File". Now check on your SABnzbd queue, where you should see something like this:

It's working! And yes, it's really going that fast. If it's not downloading, you may need to check your server settings: Sometimes ISPs block the default port, 119, meaning you'll have to use another one that your provider supports. 8080 is a common one, as is 1818. Refer back to step four for this; changing it should only take a second.
SABnzbd takes care of all that nasty .RAR rejoining and extracting for you, so once the download is done, your designated download folder should have a fully-cooked, ready-to-watch/listen/run file waiting for you. Bask in it.
So, that's Usenet!

Odd and Ends
As you've probably guessed by now, there are a lot of ways to make SABnzbd more powerful. For that, have a look at this fantastic thread on SomethingAwful by one of the app's developers, and the SABnzbd wiki, which answers just about any support question you might have.
Also, there's a big subject we didn't even address here today, which is how you actually add stuff to Usenet. The process can be a little involved, and hey, you're brand new to the world of Usenet—let the rest of us worry about uploading for now. That said, when you're finally ready, here's a primer.


Original Source: How To: Kick Your Torrent Addiction With Usenet - Usenet how to - Gizmodo


Okay, so many of you have raised some points for torrenting over usenet. Well, I came across this rebuttal from the usenet community over FSF's "Top 10 reasons you should get a seedbox" and figured it was relevant to the issues at hand. In red is FSF's comments and the text underneath is from usenetshack.com. Enjoy =)

1. Speed - Seedboxes are fast because they're most likely located in a data centre with a big chunky line in and out. And that is absolutely one hundred percent true in most cases, you'll likely see much greater (10x-20x) throughput as opposed to your standard home broadband connection. But what use is that when the files you may want to use are now located possibly hundred of miles away on your seedbox with your only means of access being your home connection? While you'll see better speeds downloading off your seedbox than from the torrent directly, this is a unnecessary step which you simply don't need to undertake. With Usenet and a decent provider (you're looking at approx similar costs to a seedbox if not less, see bottom of article) you'll be able to max out your connection just like you could downloading from your seedbox - with the massive advantage of not taking the initial step of downloading something on to the server in the first place: that part is all handled by the Usenet provider. They get their files from people uploading to them, and from other Usenet servers the world over. Any one file uploaded to your Usenet providers' server will be shared with every other Usenet provider or nntp (the protocol involved) on the net, yet you never lose your single point of contact with that one server.
2. Advantageous Downloading & Uploading Abilities - Your upload rate will be much larger than a home connection, so you can keep a good ratio on your tracker and not get kicked off for being a leech - Which is great, and goes along with the Bit-torrent philosophy but now you're effectively paying for membership to that private tracker by requiring yourself to have a seedbox. This point isn't even an issue with Usenet, there's no such thing as ratios unless you choose to be part of a private newsgroup/usenet community. You can download as much as you want (provider plan permitting) without uploading a thing and while we don't recommend this, it's perfectly feasible due to the way Usenet works. Once a file is uploaded once, that's it - no more seeding is needed, the Usenet providers handle the "seeding" (really called 'mirroring') to the other Usenet providers which gradually makes the files accessible everywhere and by anyone.
3. Competition - You'll be more competitive with other seeders and therefore go further in the community you're a part of. Other Usenet users cannot tell how much you've downloaded, so as we've said before, the ratio idea doesn't exist as such. There are a few usenet uploading communities, some of which have channels on IRC or forum boards and they keep a tally of how much you've uploaded or how many request you've filled but this is all just for the competitive side of things, not out of necessity to download more.
4. Your home internet is untouched - As the seedbox handles the torrent, you're free to do what you like with your connection. But this isn't strictly true though is it as we've already mentioned. As any files you download are on the seedbox, you've still got to somehow get them on to your computer and this means utilising your home connection. But anyway, the download isn't usually what brings a connection to a grinding halt: it's the upload that you'll want to keep an eye on. Most home internet connections have at least 10x less upload bandwidth than they do down, if not more, and this creates is what creates the bottleneck: Bit-torrent uses the upload to seed the files and this means that other applications (such as your browser) can't get web requests out as fast therefore creating the feeling that everything has slowed down. This doesn't happen with Usenet as you are only using your upload bandwidth to send tiny packets of data (KBs not MBs) to your Usenet provider telling it which headers you want to download. And even if the maxing out your download is a problem, most programs support throttling the download, leaving enough download bandwidth for your games, chat, browser and other internet apps. We have lots of experience downloading at 15MBit/s+ while getting a ping of sub 20ms on some Counter-Strike servers. (For the more technical: QoS on your router/switch sorts it so you don't even have to throttle your Usenet download).
5. Torrent from anywhere - Access to your torrents from anywhere via a web browser. A massive benefit for those that work or are not at their main computer for long periods of time, nothing like queuing up something on the train to use when you get back home. This is easily set up with Usenet, SabNZBd has a fantastic web interface (in fact, its only interface) which handles this like a dream, we'll be writing an article on how to set it up very soon. It also has the added bonus that the files you download actually end up on your computer waiting for you and not some server miles away.
6. ISP Bandwidth Caps - By using a seedbox your torrenting does not affect your home connections bandwidth cap. A valid point if you never download off your seedbox otherwise this is again mostly irrelevant. It does mean that you won't have your seeding contributing to your home connections bandwidth usage but this is the same for Usenet as it barely touches your upload. Best tip here: if you can, don't go with an ISP that has a bandwidth cap - teach them a lesson.
7. Good ratios breed great perks. - Better ratio, more respect = get more stuff. Won't spend long on this on, we've already explained why ratios don't exist. If you wish to become part of an uploading community then this may affect you but otherwise not so much.
8. ISP Limiting - Seedboxes can't get throttled by your ISP, and they are unlikely to throttle you while you're downloading off your Seedbox via HTTP/FTP. A good point, many ISPs these days have taken to throttling protocols they deem as too intensive for their shoddy networks which obviously results in slower, sucky speeds. Unfortunately this does include Usenet traffic in most cases (while not as prolific as P2P throttling) but there are ways around it: ever tried encrypting the traffic (SSL) and shoving it through port 80 (HTTP - the browsing port)? Unless your ISP has expensive DPI hardware running their end, they won't be able to tell the difference between your encrypted usenet traffic and a secure normal web download (unless they deliberately throttle all traffic to the server you're connecting to, a possibility, but they prefer port based throttling). There is also another option provided by EasyNews: they provide an excellent HTTP web interface to their NTTP newsservers and therefore you can use it without being throttled and with the added benefit that you can use your account from anywhere that has a browser.
9. An Extra Layer Of Anonymity - With no one on the torrent connecting to your home machine, you're shielded. This is the single worst problem that faces Bit-torrent as a protocol in our opinion. Every single IP you connect to share files with knows that you're also sharing the file - never a good thing. This problem is sorted with a seedbox but better yet, with Usenet, there are only 2 other groups who know what you're downloading - your provider and your ISP. Your provider is unlikely to care and hopefully won't be keeping logs (e.g. Giganews) and if you use an encrypted SSL'd connection, your ISP also has no clue of what you're downloading. That leaves you, and you know what you're downloading right? That big fat Linux ISO of course, can't get enough Ubuntu.
10. They’re Safe & Secure. - No RIAA or MPAA chasing you. I think the original author ran out of points as this seems to be identical to point 9 about anonymity so we'll glaze over this one. Put it this way: you are infinitely safer being a user of Usenet than you are of Bit-torrent.

Why do they say that the first rule of usenet is don't talk about usenet. Can anyone explain me that?

Lol, that's a line from fight club... where do they say that?

Check the comment section of this article.

@bmwxl33, as ethicks said, usenet users hate p2p users, they think they are teh shit & l33t and they don't want people to shut down usenet if it got real popular but tbh, anti-piracy and the likes don't care because the masses will never use it due to its somewhat complexity compared to other ways of getting content. + usenet has been around for what? 40+ years now, its not getting shut-down any time soon.

@Monet, your welcome =)

That's a great guide there.

For anyone interested another site that indexes NZB files is NZBsRus.com - NZB, Search, Files, Newsgroup, Usenet, Download

If has a more torrent tracker feel to it for those who don't want to step out completely on a tangent and I defiantly recommend it. :)

Thanks for this info +1 I tried it in the past because i heard how great it was but I must of been doing something wrong because i couldnt find shit. I will try with the provider you recommended.

This looks pretty sweet. I'm gonna give it a try later.

Thanks for sharing. :laugh:

EDIT: How exactly is usenet/newzbin organized? From the little experience I've had in the past, I seem to recall it's divided into groups... is there groups for specific types of content? Like, for example; a group dealing only in new DVDRips, or progressive rock music? If so, is it possible to subscribe to such groups (through RSS maybe?) and get instantly notified when new content becomes available? Or do you have to know exactly what it is you're looking for, and search for it?

EDIT2: Okay, I've found out what I needed to know. Now I just need an invite to newzbin. Anyone wanna hook me up? :laugh:

Originally Posted by bmwxl33

Why do they say that the first rule of usenet is don't talk about usenet. Can anyone explain me that?

It's the same idea behind so many private trackers.
Keep it on the low, and it won't become popular enough to be shutdown and possible even create a media circus.