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News Servers

Usenet-the Internet news forum-is a completely distributed system that never dies. Just as a Web server serves up information and resources from the Web, Usenet distributes and provides an orderly format for message boards. The protocol used to transmit Usenet posts is Network News Transport Protocol (NNTP), and a news server spools newsgroups off the Internet. News servers talk to each other and distribute and update messages by replicating themselves across newsgroups; when one news server gets a new post to a group, every other news server with that group makes a copy of it. News servers are especially useful in filtering redundant messages so they aren't distributed more than once. For example, a team of technical support users may have a discussion of a particular problem, possibly finding a solution. Later, that discussion can be used by others who have encountered the same problem, thus saving them time.

If you want to provide your intranet's users with access to particular Usenet groups or create internal newsgroups, you should select and install a news server. Your own news server will give you more control over user access to newsgroups and a faster connection to the newsgroups to which you are subscribed. The news server controls newsgroups subscribers and delivers articles to other machines. A news reader, which is connected to the server, allows users to read and post news. Many browsers, such as Netscape Navigator, have news reading options. But if you have detailed configurations for your intranet's news access, you should look into installing a news reader as a supplement to a news server.

Newsgroups often are a worthwhile addition to your intranet, but you'll have to decide the way in which to provide them. If you decide to install your own news server, you can establish internal newsgroups for your intranet. Internal newsgroups are composed of postings only from members of your intranet and are accessible only to users of your intranet, whereas external newsgroups from Usenet are composed of Internet users from around the globe. Both internal and external newsgroups are great tools for instigating communication about key internal issues and for creating project workgroups, sales discussions, and online customer support. Another benefit of having your own news server is that you can set up intracorporate newsgroup discussion lists. Such an internal list can promote pertinent and relevant organization-related discussions among all employees who otherwise would not have such a forum.

There are few commercially available newsgroup products, and I don't expect this market to grow in the future. Most of the functions that newsgroups perform now are handled by the Web, in most cases making newsgroups unnecessary. However, if you want reliable messaging without writing your own custom software or purchasing expensive message board software, or if your users are used to the Usenet format, a news server might be the way to go. There are many freeware news servers floating around on the Internet, but the only one we found to be easy to configure and stable was the Netscape News Server.

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