BlueWorld Usenet Farm

Long live Usenet, flood-fill propagation, and open peering!

This service exists to provide Usenet feeds and reader services, providing some
of the oldest text articles available via NNRP. I would love to find contributors
who have the technical knowledge necessary to bring articles from the 80s and 90s
into the spool from files in various formats.

If you're out there, get in touch.  Too many of these archives only exist on
"the web" in hands of commercial entities who poorly index them.  I'd like to
see them return to a real Usenet spool.

Spool Status:
I have sucked in the Big8 groups from 2003 forward.
Currently working on regional hierarchies de.*, it.*, etc.

Accessing the Usenet server:

To access the news server, use any news reader software and configure it to
connect to news.blueworldhosting.com as the server.

It is available on port 119 and 563. Port 119 is unencrypted and 563 is
encrypted via TLS.

If you wish to post using this service, please e-mail me for an account.
Authentication is required to post.

My 'terms of service' are that the services not be used for abusive purposes
(spam, cancel wars, etc.).

Abuse encompass hate and harassment. Disagreements, heated discussions, and
flamewars are part of Usenet, but there are lines one should not cross. If you
don't understand these lines another service may be better suited for you.

I feel these terms to be understood by the general Internet population.

I cannot prevent our peering servers from propagating offending articles
originating from other sources, but do my best to be a good Usenet citizen and
server operator.

Peering Details

Pathname:               usenet.blueworldhosting.com
Accept From:            usenet.blueworldhosting.com
Send To:                usenet.blueworldhosting.com
Location:               St. Louis, MO USA
Port:                   119
Hierarchies:  		* (full feed peers will need custom config)
Max. Article Size:      10MB
Software:		Diablo 6 with custom adjustments

Sample Diablo Configuration:

label blueworldhosting
    host        usenet.blueworldhosting.com
    addgroup    *
    delgroup	control.*
    delgroup	unidata.*
    maxsize	10000k
    maxparallel  10
    rtflush
    realtime    notify
end

Sample INN Configurations for a text-only peer:

newsfeeds:

usenet.blueworldhosting.com\
       :*,!junk/!local\
       :Aj,Tm,<1000000:innfeed!

incoming.conf:

peer usenet.blueworldhosting.com {
        hostname: usenet.blueworldhosting.com
}

innfeed.conf:

peer usenet.blueworldhosting.com {
        ip-name: usenet.blueworldhosting.com
}

Why?

I have always been fascinated by Usenet servers and flood-fill propagation.  In
1996, I was a teenager entrusted to run a ISP in a rural area when the guru who
set everything up left, and I was left to keep it running and growing.  The
operation was powered by a Cisco 2511 router with octopus cables connected to
16 modems, one Linux and one SCO UNIX server connected to the Internet via a
56Kbps fractional T1.

I was able to get a full Usenet feed from our provider, but quickly realized it
satured our link and filled the server's hard drive after running the first
night.  Even after removing most (or maybe it was all) of the binary groups,
there was still a constant stream of data causing the server's hard drive to
chatter, kept the router and hub's activity lights blinking, and brought a
smile to my face.

Sadly, we didn't have the funds to keep up with any reasonable amount of
storage, and some users began complaining of slow service due to a good portion
of our bandwidth being consumed by the Usenet feed, so we killed it.  Our
upstream provider was the local Telco, who had large DEC AlphaServers running
Digital UNIX with a lot of storage and a T3.  I wanted to be *that* cool one
day. :snicker:

As web server usage grew dramatically I gravitated toward that realm and have
been an Engineer in one form or another in the Managed Service Provider space.
Now I have access to hardware, more bandwidth than I can consume with the
harware I have, and my servers do next to nothing.  I knew Usenet wasn't dead,
but I didn't realize the binary consumption had soared to 10+Gbps throughput.
Now the challenge becomes how to handle a feed I'm interested in for research
purposes.  :)