Usenet gateway

THIS THREAD IS CLOSED!
Posts in here will NOT be answered

This hack has undergone many major changes since this thread was started. Consequently, most of the posts have become dated and of little use. To coincide with the latest major release (20010712), a new one has been started.

See this thread for the latest version and discussion

[tamarian]

Originally posted by slinky
(For those of you who are new to perl and hacking, this is not a hack for the light of heart!) [/B]

Ditto!

Be afraid, be very afraid!

No, seriously, you need your own test environment, with PHP and Perl to try things out first, and have backups.

This in no way reflects in Fastforwards skills, in my book this IS the best and most elegant vb hack I ever installed. The reason you should be careful is that this hack requires significant changes in you database since it essentially adds a functionality VB never was designed to do. And it does it very well. It doesn't add a little thing here and there like most hacks, it adds a LOT.

So, if you know your stuff, go ahead. If you're not sure, ask first.

[zarkov]

I couldnt agree more which is why i asked

But by the souds of it id be best advised not to install and test on a working board with NO perl knowledge/ experience then ill leave alone and hope that maybe something similar will be written in PHP ( if its possible, but i thought that php could do everything that perl can do and more)

thanks for the forewarnings and all the advice though people it IS really apreciated

[tamarian]

I'd be careful even if it was written in PHP!

[fastforward]

Originally posted by Zarkov
but i thought that php could do everything that perl can do and more

You've got that the wrong way round. Having said that, this particular app could be written in PHP but you wouldn't have all the modules to help you out. Plus the fact that this is executed in the background using cron. Not many hosts have the PHP executable installed that allows you to run php scripts standalone. In fact many people don't even know that you can run php scripts as standalone programs.

[NgtCrwlr]

Time to get serious about a usenet news feed. Up until now I've been all smiles, getting the gateway setup has been a blast.

Now however, reality hits and hits hard. I've had my head so buried in getting the gateway installed that I hadn't given much thought to tuning it on for mainstream use. Until now I've had all my usenet forums locked to read only, then I started thinking about the spam issue. So I stared reading TOS agreements at a bunch of the usual less than $25/mo services. Oh-oh time... I know I read a few posts here of people wondering about the same issue and at the time I just blew it off thinking ah heck, I'll worry about that when I get there.

Well I'm there/here and I'm worried. Not only is it against the TOS of just about any service to pull/suck news... most of them specifically state they are for individual use only. Not to mention the up to $200/hr spam cleanup charges. Several renegade BBS users could bring a world of hurt on the web master. Especially when we would be breaking the TOS even before getting caught for spam problems. Not a good picture.

How about a few of us group together and pre-pay for one *real* feed that we could all use? This would be cheaper than doing it alone.

Here's a few snips of what I found so far...

Usenet NewsServer Club
Account Usage - UNSC accounts are single-user accounts. This means that only one login from your account is allowed at a time, and the owner of the account (or their immediate family) is the only person allowed to use that account.
http://www.alibis.com/

NewsGroups.com
I will not sell, redistribute, or copy in any way the contents of this site. I will not allow anyone to use my password or post SPAM of any type. If I do post, I do so at my own risk.
http://www.newsgroups.com/

1usenet.com
INTENDED USE - Accounts are intended for personal use only, commercial use is prohibited without prior written authorization

We have ZERO tolerance for Spammers or Flooders. Posting is a privilege, not a right, if you post SPAM and or flood any group, your account or posting privileges may be revoked WITHOUT PRIOR WARNING, and you may be billed (at the discretion of the System Administrator) for the cleanup, at $200.00 (US) per hour, plus any Collections and or Attorney's fee's incurred in collection of this fee. 30 day auto billing for 1 year
http://www.1usenet.com/

Usenet-X.com = popup crap - Don't even bother
SPAM AND FLOODING - We have ZERO tolerance for Spammers or Flooders. Posting is a privilege, not a right, if you post SPAM and or flood any group, your account or posting privileges may be revoked WITHOUT PRIOR WARNING, and you may be billed (at the discretion of the System Administrator) for the cleanup, at $200.00 (US) per hour, plus any Collections and or Attorney's fee's incurred in collection of this fee.
Posting Footer - usenet-x.com reservers the right to attach an advertisement to the bottom any posts you make through our service. If you object to this you have the option of posting through spamkiller.usenet-x.com, which does not attach the footer.
INTENDED USE - Accounts are intended for personal use only, commercial use is prohibited without prior written authorization from usenet-x.com.

[NgtCrwlr]

Here's a couple possible candidates.

Ball and Ball, L.P
$59.95/month Pull Newsfeed - includes accepting a return feed of your local posts. You are expected to enforce a strong anti-spam policy. (limited to 250 Megabytes of downloads per day)

$99.95/month Pull Newsfeed - includes accepting a return feed of your local posts. You are expected to enforce a strong anti-spam policy. (limited to 500 Megabytes of downloads per day)

$149.95 /month Pull Newsfeed - includes accepting a return feed of your local posts. You are expected to enforce a strong anti-spam policy. (limited to 1000 Megabytes of downloads per day)

Usenet Acceptable use Policy: We have a strong anti-spam policy. If you spam Usenet through our servers, we will terminate your account and charge you for any costs we incur in dealing with complaints and cleaning up your mess. Posting of illegal content is NOT allowed on our servers and is grounds for account termination without a refund. Groups carried are subject to change without notice.

For our Usenet service, we use the Dnews server software. Our service is aimed at the user who wishes to participate in Usenet discussion groups. If it's porn, warez, or mp3 files you're looking for, we're not the choice for you. If it's a fast server with decent retention and good spam filtering, we're the choice for you. We try to make our service family friendly.
http://www.bnb-lp.com/Usenet.html

Eskimo.com Usenet Services
For Organizations - We provide NNTP read/post access to other sites, ISPs, businesses, BBSs, and other organizations, for $600/year, or $180/quarter, or $70/month per domain. If you're looking for a way to provide Usenet News services to your customers without the expense of maintaining your own news server and you are looking for a solution that doesn't impose a per subscriber or per megabyte charge consider using our news service as an option.


NOT a candidate just more of what we don't want!

NewsGuy.com
Newsguy are intended for the use of its subscribers and is not intended for re-distribution, or as an unauthorized news feed to another service. Downloading article quantities indicative of pulling a newsfeed from either service is unacceptable. Subscribers connecting to the service with news retrieval software which is designed to copy the contents of large quantities of newsgroups, or sustain multiple news connections, will have their service terminated. *snipped*

The cost for a commercial newsfeed is $400 per month. The Net.* hierarchy of newsgroups requires extra setup at the customer's site to insure compliance with their "sound site" policy. Recommended minimum equipment to fully utilize our newsfeeds:
A Pentium server, 400 Mhz or faster, 500 Mbs of RAM, 64 Gbytes of disk storage, INN news server software. A bused pair of T1 with combined 3 mbps available bandwidth.
Newsguy Newsfeeds cannot be propagated outbound to servers or resold. Only newsfeeds back to Newsguy's servers are allowed. As Usenet news is always evolving, Newsguy cannot guarantee the availability of any group(s), and we strongly urge you to review our service policy prior to signing up for our newsfeed.

[Gilby]

NgtCrwlr, how many newsgroups do you plan on pulling? If it's just a few, then you should have no problem with most of the cheaper ones that are meant for individual use.

[fastforward]

What I've done is installed a news server on my machine that pulls from all the other servers I'm interested in and then I just connect to my local server to get the news. You will never be able trap 100% of all spam, but with the hack spam filters and the DNews filters you should be quite safe.

As for the 'no pulling' clause. You will be pulling an insignificant amount of news in comparison to anyone who happens to download a few mp3s or a couple of binary pics each day. You won't even register on their meters.

The commercial clause is debatable. Unless you are charging subscriptions for access to your usenet forums you could argue your case.

But the bottom line is; the amount of news you are actually downloading really is tiny. As long as you stay away from the binary groups I wouldn't worry too much.

[NgtCrwlr]

Right now I have only 9 groups and don't plan to have more than 25. I know this is tiny and the bandwidth of even a history pull would not register on a meter. It still doesn't make me comfortable.

What about when/if any of us get popular and you end up with 500 to 2000 posts or more per day going out to usenet? Hmm one password and 1000K outgoing posts each day, I think that one might trip a red flag or two.

I think the biggest reason for my fear is that I'm not on a dedicated box yet and can't do some of the cool things that you dedicated guys can. If I had a usenet feed service send a spam alert to my current host I could effectively have my sites totally shut down, not just the news feed. Even if the problem was with some trouble maker on the BBS it still filters down to me.

So I guess it comes down to a few choices for me either leave the usenet forums read only and use free servers, pay the money for either a dedicated server, or pay the higher buck news service that understands and accepts what we are doing.

I'm still searching, who knows I might come up with a service that will welcome us all with open arms.

[fastforward]

That Ball and Ball account seems very cheap. I was paying $30 for my newsfeeds account before I left them, and that was just a normal personal account for home use. I might take a closer look at them myself

Keep us updated if you come across anymore bargains.