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Usenet (), short for User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers.

Users read and post messages (called articles or posts, and collectively termed news) to one or more topic categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to the Internet forums that were developed after the introduction of the World Wide Web. A major difference between a BBS or web message board and Usenet is the absence of a central server and dedicated administrator or hosting provider. Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing set of news servers that store and forward messages to one another via "news feeds". Individual users may read messages from and post to a local (or simply preferred) news server, which can be operated by anyone, and those posts will automatically be forwarded to any other news servers peered with the local one, while the local server will receive any news its peers have that it currently lacks. This results in the automatic proliferation of content posted by any user on any server to any other user subscribed to the same newsgroups on other servers. However, unlike BBSes and web forums, the dispersed nature of Usenet usually permits users who are interested in receiving some content to access it simply by choosing to connect to news servers that carry the feeds they want. In the early 1990s, shortly before access to the Internet became commonly affordable, Usenet connections via FidoNet's dial-up BBS networks made long-distance or worldwide discussions and other communication widespread. The name Usenet comes from the term "users' network". The first Usenet group was NET.general, which quickly became net.general. On the Internet, Usenet is transported via the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) on Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) port 119 for standard, unprotected connections, and on TCP port 563 for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encrypted connections. Usenet was conceived in 1979 and publicly established in 1980, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, over a decade before the World Wide Web went online (and thus before the general public received access to the Internet), making it one of the oldest computer network communications systems still in widespread use. The format and transmission of Usenet articles is similar to that of Internet e-mail messages. The difference between the two is that Usenet articles can be read by any user whose news server carries the group to which the message was posted, as opposed to email messages, which have one or more specific recipients. Usenet differs from such media in several ways: Usenet requires no personal registration with the group concerned; information need not be stored on a remote server; archives are always available; and reading the messages does not require a mail or web client, but a news client. However, it is now possible to read and participate in Usenet newsgroups to a large degree using ordinary web browsers since most newsgroups are now copied to several web sites.

While commercial providers offer easier to use online backup services, storing data on Usenet is free of charge (although access to Usenet itself may not be).

In 1980, Usenet was connected to ARPANET through UC Berkeley, which had connections to both Usenet and ARPANET. Usenet gained 50 member sites in its first year, including Reed College, University of Oklahoma, and Bell Labs, and the number of people using the network increased dramatically; however, it was still a while longer before Usenet users could contribute to ARPANET.

Public archives of Usenet articles have existed since the early days of Usenet, such as the system created by Kenneth Almquist in late 1982.

Usenet free servers A list of free providers of Usenet server access

Quick Facts

• Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing set of news servers that store and forward messages to one another via "news feeds".
• On the Internet, Usenet is transported via the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) on Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) port 119 for standard, unprotected connections, and on TCP port 563 for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encrypted connections.
• Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to the Internet forums that were developed after the introduction of the World Wide Web.
• The name Usenet comes from the term "users' network".
• The first Usenet group was NET.general, which quickly became net.general.

Source material: Wikipedia - "Usenet". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.