Zen News Server FAQ
Q. What is the Zen News Server?
A. The news server provides access to 50,000+ news groups in a global system called Usenet. These groups allow postings regarding all different range of topics from Linux to gardening defined by the name of the group in a similar manner to web-based forums. When a user posts to a news group that post is then mirrored to other news servers on the Internet for other users to read and post replies.
Many users also use Usenet to post binary content such as images and videos which are encoded in posts as text, binary news clients are able to read this encoded text and decode it into the original binary information for you to be able to read on your computer.
Q. Is the Zen new server outsourced to another news provider such as Giganews etc?
A. Zen's news server is completely in-house. This gives us administrative control over the performance and availability of the news server.
Q. What is the address of the server?
A. You should point your news client to news.zen.co.uk
Q. What are threads and how many should I use?
A. You will typically see the word thread in your binary news reader. A thread is a single download process that can occur at any one time. So, should you enable 2 download threads your news client will be able to download 2 files simultaneously, sharing the available bandwidth on your connection. Increasing the number of threads will improve the download speed of your connection but also increases the load on the server. We recommend the following number of threads:
512k: 2-3 threads
1mbit: 3-6 threads
2mbit: 4-8 threads
You may still download with a single thread, this may not give the greatest performance but will help other applications perform better on your connection if they are contending for available bandwidth.
Q. What about retention?
A. After a post has existed on Usenet for a certain amount of time it may be dropped by the news server in order to save disk space and increase performance on the server as a whole. The time that a post can remain on the server is set by the host (such as Zen, Giganews etc) and this is called retention. Zen's news server has the following retention settings:
Binary posts: All groups (7 days)
Text posts: zen. (120 days), uk. (90 days), alt. (21 days), All other groups (40 days)
There have been many requests to increase the binary retention on the server however there are no plans to increase retention at this current time.
Q. Are there any download limitations?
A. There are no limits to our news server including download limits (capping), download speeds (throttling) or the number of threads you may use.
Q. What client should I use?
A. Whatever client suits you best, clients tend to be in two flavours, text and binary. Text news clients specialise in viewing postings as text and used in discussion groups. Binary news clients will download posts en-masses and decode the content into a binary file that you can load on your computer, such as mp3, rar, avi etc. There are a number of clients available for each platform
Windows
Text: Outlook Express, Thunderbird, xnews
Binary: Grabit, Newsbin, Newsleacher
Mac OS
Text: Hogwasher
Binary: MT-newswatcher
Linux
Text: Pine (console), Slrn (console), Pan (Gnome), knews (KDE), rtin (console)
Binary: bnr2, nget (console), nzbget (console, nzb grabber)
Q. How can I request a news group to be added?
A. The Zen news server currently contains all groups on Usenet and is continuously updated. If you find a group which our server does not currently host then it is likely the group was either not created properly or it exists only on a single news server and isn't part of Usenet. In these cases we will not be able to create it on our server.
If you do find a Usenet group which has been missed you may email into support@zen.co.uk and they may be able to help you with your request.
Q. Do I need to be a Zen user to access the Zen news server?
A. Access to Zen's news server is restricted to Zen IP addresses only so you will need to connect to it via a Zen broadband, leased line or Dial-up connection. If you do not use Zen as your ISP and you do not wish to migrate, there are a number of 3rd-party news providers on the Internet which are subscription-based you might consider.
Q. What are .nzb files?
A. nzb files are created by the Newzbin (www.newzbin.com) indexing service and contains the article ID's to all posts belonging to a binary download. This saves a great deal of time in finding all the articles yourself and many binary news readers will open these files to add the articles to their download queues automatically. Newzbin is a subscription service and not associated with Zen Internet in any way.
Q. As Usenet contains illegal downloads, are Zen endorsing copyright abuse or illegal content?
A. As Usenet is a non-centralised resource Zen do not control the content of Usenet, however we do cooperate with law-enforcement and Internet watch groups to remove illegal content from our server as far as possible, however due to the sheer size of the Usenet system and amount of content that exists on it, we can not moderate Usenet and are simply a transit carrier providing the service. Zen do not endorse copyright abuse and downloading of such content is against our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).
David Nelson
Team Leader
Business Support Unit
Zen Internet