Newsgroups

A mailing list is one way of distributing announcements and exchanging questions and answers, but it is not the most efficient way. A mail message is sent to every person on the list. It is sent immediately, and it must be stored on the local system until it is read. Thus, if there are 100 people on a list, 100 messages are sent over the network and stored at 100 receiving systems. Network news provides a more efficient method for distributing this kind of information. The information is stored around the network on news servers. Most sites have only one or two news servers. Therefore, instead of moving mail messages to every individual on your network who wants to discuss Windows NT, news articles about NT are stored at one location where they can be read when the user is ready. Not only does this reduce the network load, it reduces the number of redundant copies that are stored on local disk files.

Network news is delivered over TCP/IP networks using the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP). NNTP is a simple command/response protocol. The NNTP server listens to port 119. NNTP requires no special configuration. The only thing you need to know to configure a news reader is the host name of your network news server. Ask your ISP. Most ISPs provide network news as part of their basic service.

Windows NT 4.0 does not include a news reader. But it doesn’t matter. News readers are very easy to obtain. News is supported in the Netscape Web browser. If you use that browser, ...

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