Usenet Services
PhreakNet operates a free news service that can be used to access Usenet and other special newsgroups.
Users
The PhreakNet news service provides access to many public Usenet groups as well as a handful of private telecommunications and technology-related newsgroups.
The PhreakNet news server is accessible by NNTP (ports 119 and 563 for readers) at news.phreaknet.org. STARTTLS (port 119) and implicit TLS (port 563) are supported and required for authentication.
Most public groups can be accessed read-only unauthenticated or online. Registration is required for full access. You can register for free on the PhreakNet BBS. (This account is separate from your InterLinked account.)
New users can read articles immediately but require approval to be able to post. Contact the sysop after registration to have your privileges updated.
Users must post using a valid assigned email address of theirs (i.e. BBS email address) or alternately may use any address ending in .invalid. To post using another email address, contact us to request an exception.
Retention varies by hierarchy and even by group. Generally, technical/communications-related groups have the longest retention. Contact us to request retention changes.
While we carry most active newsgroups in the Big 8 and beyond, we do NOT carry a full Usenet feed. In particular, due to the large number of inactive or spam-dominated groups and to minimize frustration for new users, we do not carry dormant, spam-dominated, or hyper-political groups. We also filter articles to provide an enjoyable and spam-free experience "out of the box". If you notice legitimate news hierarchies, groups, or articles missing, please contact us at newsgroups at phreaknet.org.
All common NNTP extensions are supported. You may wonder if we are using INN, Diablo, or some other news package. Actually, we are using custom software — the NNTP module part of the LBBS bulletin board package. As such, feel free to report possible software issues to us.
Peering
We are relatively new and both looking for additional peers and happy to peer with you as long as you are okay with getting a heavily filtered feed from us (as opposed to a full Usenet feed). Generally, these are our peering guidelines:
- Static IP address
- Reliable, real-time** feeding and availability
- Text only, NO binaries
- Spam filtering (e.g. cleanfeed or similar) or other measures to prevent spam
- Compliance with our maximum article size and poison group exclusions
- Support for restricting Distributions
- First and/or main feed possible, if other conditions are met*
*If you want a full Usenet feed, you can still peer with us, but should also peer with another server that actually provides a full feed. We do not feed articles that we reject.
**We are willing to accomodate delayed feeds that are queued up and flushed periodically, provided we can flush your feed at least once every 24 hours to avoid a significant backlog. We also support the ETRN extension to NNTP to allow you to flush articles on demand at your convenience.
Additionally, we carry several restricted hierarchies that are not part of larger Usenet and cater largely towards specialized interests. We are open to exchanging these hierarchies under the following guidelines:
- The appropriate Distribution header must be added to prevent unwanted crossposting or leaks (i.e. sites should be sound)
- Access to these groups (read or write) must be available only to registered and authenticated users. Any kind of public unauthenticated Internet access (web or NNTP) is prohibited.
- Users must post using a valid email address (or alternately a
.invalidaddress, provided the injecting server retains logs of who posted what) - Article guidelines: Maximum 1 KB article size, plain-text only, no binaries, no encoding or obfuscation, no top-posting (either enforce these in software or have guidelines for your users)
- Peered servers must use TLS when transferring articles over the public Internet. If using LBBS, you can use the
[tls]section to do this. - Group circulation should remain restricted to peers that have expressed an interest in these groups, i.e. do not offer them by default in your other outgoing feeds
- You furthermore only peer these groups with other peers that likewise abide by these guidelines
Peering Details
| Path Identity | news.phreaknet.org |
|---|---|
| Incoming Feeds To | news.phreaknet.org |
| Ports | 433 + implicit TLS preferred; 119 + STARTTLS acceptable* |
| Outgoing Feeds From | news.phreaknet.org |
| Article Size | Max 128 KB |
| Max Crossposts | 10 |
| Connections | 1-2** |
| Bandwidth | 100 Mbps |
| Memory | 512 MB |
| Storage | 2 GB |
| Software | LBBS net_nntp |
| Peering | newspeering at phreaknet.org |
| Abuse | newsabuse at phreaknet.org |
| Public Hierarchies | 24hoursupport,alt,aus,ca.,cakewalk,calgary,cam.misc,can,chi,christnet,comp,demon,edm,england,eternal-september,free,gnu.emacs,hfx,humanities,linux,misc,muc,netscape,news,nf,nyc,nz,ott,perl,rec,sci,soc,talk,uk |
*TLS not required for peers that only feed us public Usenet groups.
**1 preferred, due to the small number of groups we carry and their limited article traffic, more than that is unlikely to yield any benefit
Note that we may not and probably don't carry all groups within any given hierarchy due to site policy, and even in groups we do carry, spammy/unwanted articles may be rejected; this is normal.
Other Notes
- We don't yet submit to TOP1000 but plan to in the future
- If a peering arrangement doesn't make sense, and you'd just like to suck news from us instead, please contact us for arrangements.
- At the moment, all control messages are processed manually, not automatically
- At the moment, we only support NNTP, not UUCP
Sample Configurations
LBBS net_nntp.conf
[outgoing]
phreaknet/news.phreaknet.org = 24hoursupport.*,alt.*,aus.*,ca.*,cakewalk.*,calgary.*,cam.*,can.*,chi.*,christnet.*,comp.*,demon.*,edm.*,england.*,eternal-september.*,free.*,gnu.*,hfx.*,humanities.*,linux.*,misc.*,muc.*,netscape.*,news.*,nf.*,nyc.*,nz.*,ott.*,perl.*,rec.*,sci.*,soc.*,talk.*,uk.*,!*.test,!free.usenet,!free.pt,!linux.debian.[bc]*,@alt.binaries.*,@alt.bainaries.*,@*.politics,@talk.politics.*,@alt.checkmate,@*rush-limbaug*,@alt.slack,!local.*,!junk/!local:<131072,Ap,Tn::nntps://news.phreaknet.org:433
INN newsfeeds.conf
phreaknet/news.phreaknet.org:24hoursupport.*,alt.*,aus.*,ca.*,cakewalk.*,calgary.*,cam.*,can.*,chi.*,christnet.*,comp.*,demon.*,edm.*,england.*,eternal-september.*,free.*,gnu.*,hfx.*,humanities.*,linux.*,misc.*,muc.*,netscape.*,news.*,nf.*,nyc.*,nz.*,ott.*,perl.*,rec.*,sci.*,soc.*,talk.*,uk.*,!*.test,!free.usenet,!free.pt,!linux.debian.[bc]*,@alt.binaries.*,@alt.bainaries.*,@*.politics,@talk.politics.*,@alt.checkmate,@*rush-limbaug*,@alt.slack,!local.*,!junk/!local:<131072,Ap,Tm:innfeed!
We do not carry all hierarchies or groups (and also filter incoming articles) so we may reject articles matching the expression above; this is normal. We can provide more filtered expressions on request to reduce unnecessary feed processing and bandwidth usage.