Do Usenet Provider accept Bitcoin?
Yes, a few of them do! Currently we have found the following providers who accept crypto:
- Usenet Express,
- Usenet Farm,
- Block News.
The Usenet – What is it actually?
How to download from Usenet? Are you looking for a suitable Usenet provider? We have listed the best providers below.
What is Usenet?
Usenet was founded in 1979 and is therefore much older than the Internet. It is a worldwide electronic network that represents its own independent branch alongside the World Wide Web. Usenet was originally a parallel network to Arpanet – the predecessor of today’s Internet.
The term Usenet stands for Unix User Network, a decentralized network with which binary files and text messages can be distributed. In recent years, the Usenet has become the largest platform for the exchange of data, news, and discussion postings alongside, for example, one-click hosts or forums.
The Usenet infrastructure is decentralized, i.e. there are no central servers, but many independent servers or entire server farms. Even today, the Usenet is still very important for many people. In recent years, it has become especially popular because of the easy way to deposit and download files here.
What do I need?
To use the Usenet, you need a Usenet account with a provider of your choice as well as software – the newsreader. We have compared the most popular German-language providers in the following table:
Although the test accounts of the various Usenet providers look very similar at first glance, each provider nevertheless has its own subtleties. For example, with Usenext you can download a whopping 30 GB instead of the usual 10 GB, while Firstload and Usenet.nl “only” offer 15 and 10 GB, respectively. The service, on the other hand, is relatively similar for all three providers: You can download at full speed with all of them and have access to an archive of over 25 petabytes of data – the equivalent of around 2,000,000 GB! The software also differs slightly – but they are all convenient, easy to understand and free of charge.
Our tip: Usenext is particularly suitable for beginners – here you can test for a long time and familiarize yourself with Usenet at your leisure.
The right Usenet provider
If you have not yet had anything to do with Usenet, you will need a few things to get started. The most important thing, of course, is access to the Usenet, which you can obtain free of charge (for text newsgroups) or for a fee (for binary newsgroups) from a Usenet provider of your choice. If you only choose the free access, you can read posts in the newsgroups, write your own posts and also reply to other people’s posts. However, you will not be able to access file-oriented newsgroups such as “alt.binaries.german.movies” – to access or download these files (=binaries) you will need a paid Usenet provider such as Usenext, Firstload or another provider of your choice. Since the providers have to finance the expensive infrastructure for the large amounts of data and high data rates, full Usenet access with binaries cannot be free of charge.
Usenet Newsreader
Once you have decided on a provider, the only thing missing now is the appropriate “client” for accessing the Usenet. The software required to browse and download from the Usenet is called a “newsreader” – if you translate the term into German, it quickly becomes clear exactly what it does: it reads the messages on the various newsgroups. With the premium providers presented here, a suitable and convenient newsreader is included with every tariff, and even with the free test accesses, you naturally receive the newsreader “included”. Other providers do not offer their own newsreader, but here you can switch to various other free or paid newsreaders.
The big advantage of the newsreaders of the premium providers like Usenext, Firstload and Usenet.nl is the easy handling of the software as well as great features like:
- Preview of images, videos, music tracks already before or during the download.
- Import of NZB files
- Automatic repair of broken files
- Automatic unpacking of archives
- Ratings about content – from users for users
- Comfortable and powerful search function
Key data about Usenet
- Founded: 1979 in the USA
- Over 60,000 newsgroups
- 2,500 terabytes of data volume (1 terabyte = 1024 GB)
- 5000GB of data added daily
- Millions of users
Usenet Glossary
In the following, a few, but very important terms concerning Usenet will be made understandable to you – they are very important for dealing with this network.
Retention:
Retention refers to the “holding time” of the stored files – that is, how long a newly uploaded content remains stored and retrievable on the news server. If the retention is 800 days, for example, the files are stored for 800 days and can be downloaded, after which they are deleted. Therefore, when choosing a Usenet provider, pay attention to the retention, which should logically be very high. Just a few years ago, retention was around 70-100 days – today, with premium providers such as Usenext, it is over 1000 days for binaries as well as 1500 days for text messages – i.e. the amount of data available on Usenet is growing every day!
Binaries:
Binaries are files attached to posts. They can be of any size and can be downloaded with a paid Usenet account. Especially the binaries enjoy great popularity in Usenet, so often music files, movies and also programs and games are attached or uploaded here.
Newsreader:
The newsreader is required for reading content and downloading binaries. Without it, nothing works on Usenet. Most premium Usenet providers offer a convenient Usenet newsreader free of charge, which can then only be used with this provider (e.g. Usenext or Firstload). However, there are also other newsreaders that work with any Usenet access – such as Sabnzbd or Grabit. You can find out more about them in the overview of Usenet newsreaders
Newsgroups:
The content on Usenet is posted in different groups depending on the topic – the so-called newsgroups. There are numerous newsgroups on almost every topic. If you are looking for files or binaries you have to look in the alt.* newsgroups, an overview of the available groups can be found for example on Binsearch.info. Here you can also search the newsgroups directly and download the files directly.Basically, the newsgroups are divided into text-oriented and file-oriented groups. Examples of text-oriented newsgroups are the “supergroups” comp.*, talk.*, soc.*, sci.*, humanities.*, misc.*, news.* and rec.*.
Newsgroups are thereby formed in a specific format: hierarchy.subhierarchy.topic, – pay particular attention to the correct choice of newsgroup when posting messages and files.
News servers:
The news servers are the heart of Usenet – this is where the content generated by users is stored. The news servers are all interconnected and form a decentralized network of thousands of servers. If a file is uploaded to a news server, for example, it is mirrored to the other servers and is available everywhere after a short time. We have created a list of news server addresses of the most popular providers for you, you will need these to set up your newsreader correctly.
NZB files:
NZB is a file format in which information about a content or a file is stored. They contain the information where the respective file parts are stored – with the help of a newsreader the NZB can be imported and the download of the individual files can begin. You can find more information about NCB files here.