Card
Trial
Header
Dnlds
Cancels
Filter
Reader
List
Route
Page
Filter
Service
Info
Card
Trial
Header
Dnlds
Cancels
Filter
Reader
List
Route
Page
Filter
Service
Info
| Click heading for explanation | Price/month | Credit Card |
Free Trial |
NNTP Header |
Logs Dnlds |
Accepts Cancels |
Spam Filter |
Web Reader |
Group List |
Trace Route |
Status Page |
Server Side Filter |
Premium Service |
More Info |
|
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| Partial | Full | Discount | Tiers | |||||||||||||||
| Airnews | No | $10 | Yes | No | A | Ref | Enc | Grp | Yes | Own | No | Both | Yes | Yes | No | ClariNet | No | Airnews |
| Altopia | $6 | $12 | No | Yes | A | No | No | No | No | No | No | List | Yes | Yes | Yes | ClariNet | No | Altopia |
| Barditch | No | $15 | Yes | No | A | Ref | ? | No | ? | Yes | Yes | List | ? | ? | ? | ? | No | Barditch |
| Giganews | No | $12 | Yes | No | R | No | Enc | ? | No | CF/H | No | Search | Yes | No | No | ? | No | Giganews |
| GUBA | No | $10 | No | No | R | Part | N/A | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No | ? | ? | No | GUBA |
| Liberty | No | $18 | Yes | No | R | No | ? | ? | ? | ? | No | Search | No | No | ? | ? | No | Liberty |
| Netcene | $6 | $12 | Yes | No | A | Ref | No | No | No | CF | No | Search | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | No | Netcene |
| News Service | No | $10 | No | No | R | Part | ? | ? | ? | ? | No | Search | No | No | ? | ? | No | News Service |
| Newsdex | No information about this provider | Newsdex | ||||||||||||||||
| Newsfeeds | No | $10 | No | No | R | No | ? | ? | ? | Own | Yes | Both | No | No | Yes | ? | No | Newsfeeds |
| NewsGuy | Yes | $10 | Yes | No | A | No | ? | ? | No | Hippo | Yes | List | No | No | Yes | Archive | No | NewsGuy |
| Click heading for explanation | Price/month | Credit Card |
Free Trial |
NNTP Header |
Logs Dnlds |
Accepts Cancels |
Spam Filter |
Web Reader |
Group List |
Trace Route |
Status Page |
Server Side Filter |
Premium Service |
More Info |
|
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| Partial | Full | Discount | Tiers | |||||||||||||||
| Newshog | No | $10 | No | No | A | Part | N/A | ? | ? | Own | Only | No | No | No | Yes | ? | No | Newshog |
| Newsnerds | Not suitable for most individual users. $125 (suck feed) - $350/month (IHAVE feed) | Newsnerds | ||||||||||||||||
| NewsReader | No | $8 | Yes | No | R | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | CF | Only | Yes | No | No | No | No | Yes | NewsReader |
| Nuthin But News | No | $10 | No | No | R | $$$ | ? | ? | ? | ? | Yes | List | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | No | Nuthin But News |
| Omeganews | No | $8 | No | No | A | No | ? | ? | ? | ? | Yes | List | No | No | ? | ? | No | Omeganews |
| onlyNews! | No | $8 | Yes | No | A | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | List | No | Yes | No | No | No | onlyNews! |
| Radar News | No | $3 | No | No | A | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | Yes | ? | ? | No | Radar News |
| Randori | No | $10 | Yes | Yes | A | No | ? | ? | ? | ? | No | List | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | No | Randori |
| Real News | No | $10 | Yes | No | A | No | ? | ? | ? | ? | No | List | No | No | ? | ? | No | Real News |
| RemarQ | No | $12 | Yes | No | A | Yes | No | No | No | CF | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | RemarQ |
| Slurp | No | $9 | No | No | R | Yes | ? | ? | ? | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? | No | Slurp |
| VIP-News | No | $24 | Yes | No | R | No | ? | ? | ? | ? | No | List | No | No | ? | ? | No | VIP-News |
Price/Month: The prices listed are for basic service levels.
Credit Cards:
NNTP Header: Many news servers add a header field to each post containing the IP address from which it originated. This information can usually identify the ISP and sometimes the geographic location. For more about privacy issues see the privacy section. IMPORTANT: See the Court Order section.
Free Trial: Some providers offer a time limited trial of their full services, some offer trial of a limited range of their services, some offer a money back trial period and some offer no free trial. If available, follow the link to see what a type of trial a particular provider offers.
Group List: Some providers post a list of all the groups they carry. By downloading this list you can see if they carry the groups you're interested in and transferring a file of this size is a good way to test the quality of the route from the provider to your ISP (see the Trace Route section). For a discussion of the importance of the number of groups carried see the Empty Groups section. If available, follow the link to download the group list.
Web Reader: Some providers offer a web interface so you can access groups with your web browser.
Trace Route: It's important that you check the route to and from a provider. A friend's experience will do you no good since your route will differ from his. You can check the route to a provider with normal traceroute software. If you'll primarily be downloading, the route from the provider to you is more important. If available, follow the link provided in the comparison table. It's wise to make multiple tests during the times that you'll most commonly use the service. If you don't know how to interpret the results, send a copy to the support department of the provider and ask for their evaluation of it. Also see the Group List section.
Status Page: Some providers offer a status page to keep users apprised of problems and other information pertinent to the service. If available, follow the link to see what's offered. In cases where no status page is offered, a link to the announce group may be provided. Being able to read that group before subscribing is dependent on whether your current provider carries it.
Spam Filter: Most providers attempt to remove spam from their feed. Before jumping to conclusions, see the What is Filtered section.
Accepts Cancels: Some servers will remove messages when they receive a cancel message and some will not. See the Cancels Pros & Cons section. Note: using a service that does not honor cancels does not affect your ability to cancel your own messages. You can issue cancels as always and those servers who honor them will still remove your message.
Server Side Filters: When you set a filter with your news client, all headers are retrieved and those matching your filter will be removed. Server side filters allow the removal of headers on the server prior to transmission. Spam filters are a special type of server side filter (over which you, the user, have no control). At least one provider offers filters (not for filtering spam) that the user controls: "...customers can have the server filter out articles based on the number of groups they are cross-posted to. They can also filter out groups that do not have a certain minimum number of posts."
Premiun Services: Some providers offer news groups that only paid subscribers can access. An example of such a premium service is ClariNet.
Logs Downloads:
Most (all?) providers will not release information about a user or his activities without a court order. All providers will turn over information if a court having jurisdiction over them so orders. For that reason, what information a provider collects may be important to you. Most users can consider 'No' and 'St' as functionally the same but obviously, the complete absence of information is the most secure.
One provider claims to not log uploads but all others do log them to enable them to deal with spam. Some services keep these logs far longer than others. See the Court Order section to see why that may be important.
Comments: Additional information not covered in the table.
Empty Groups: One provider carries 75,740 groups (2/22/99). A respected news admin, Jeremy Nixon, is of the opinion that there are not that many groups and makes valid points about the subject on his Shopping For A Usenet Provider page. There are obscure useages for "empty" groups that likely will not interest you but one thing that carrying 75,000 groups is an indication of is that it's very likely that all active groups are carried regardless of content. Even the most highly "manicured" groups lists have over 20,000 groups making it next to impossible to determine if all groups that you may later be interested in are carried by examination..
Privacy: Not yet. For now, check out the links at Replay Associates or at Anonymizer.com. Or check out this essay.
Court Orders: Most (all?) providers will not release information about a user or his activities without a court order. All providers will turn over information if a court having jurisdiction over them so orders. Logs of uploads will likely include the IP address from which a message was posted so posts can be traced to the ISP who likely logged who was assigned that IP address at the time of the post. It's possible that the phone # from which the user connected to the ISP is also logged. Such court orders are uncommon. I have heard of some for criminal cases involving kiddie porn and a few for civil cases.
Partial: Some providers have a reduced rate for limited service. One such limit is no binary groups.
Full: Access to all groups (not necessarily at unthrottled speed)
Discount: Some providers have a discounted rate if you prepay for multiple months (note: may not be refundable)
Tiers: Some providers throttle transfer speed costing high speed users more but usually resulting in fewer congestion problems.
A: Accepts credit cards as well as payment by other means such as money order or check.
R: Requires payment by credit card.
N: Does not accept credit card payment.
Yes: Adds NNTP information.
No: Does not add NNTP information.
Enc: Adds encrypted NNTP information.
N/A: Not applicable (no posting from this service).
Full: Time limited trial of full service.
Part: Feature limited trial.
Ref: Refund within a limited time - usually one month.
No: None.
List: Listing of all groups - no search facility.
Search: Facility to search for a particular group - no list.
Both: Both a search facility and a group list.
No: None.
Yes
No
Only: News client access not supported
CF: CleanFeed
Hippo: SpamHippo
CF/H: Both CleanFeed and SpamHippo
Own: Own filtering mechanism, including filters built into the software.
No: None
Yes: Information about which articles you download is recorded.
No: No information about downloads is recorded.
St: The precise article downloaded is not logged but statistics are kept.
