Ant wrote:
On 3/25/2012 8:15 AM PT, BillW50 typed:

Are there any good, free newsservers?

I like "news.eternal-september.org" myself. If you want binary
newsgroups, then that would be a bad one.

I don't think there are any free binary news servers.

If and when they exist, they usually have a transfer limit per
day. Like 50MB. Some users change accounts, to try to abuse
such a privilege, which may be why even the most feeble
attempts to offer a free binary service, have to stop.

If a person has a 200GB per month internet cap, and uses
that to do nothing but USENET binaries, I think you can
see why the operator of a free service, would be in
for a very expensive Internet bill at the end of the
month. Ten thousand leeches at 200GB per, would be
a pretty serious monthly bill for the server operator.
And that's where the 50MB per day cap idea comes in.

Some of these binary servers, operate as "test servers".
Say you run a commercial service, and a new version of
INN software becomes available. You load it on the
"free" server first, and ten thousand leeches check
the server software for stability for you. That's the
justification for running a free service - it's for the
free testing it provides. If the new server software
is stable, then it can be loaded on the "paying customer"
server. And thus, the "free loader" server will be up and
down, as software changes are made.

Paul