Frequently Asked Questions

Products/Services - News Feed

Note for SBCIS customers: This document contains vital configuration information, please read the entire document.

Before we can establish a feed to your site, we need the following information:

Whether you want a pull feed or a push feed. (A "pull" feed uses the NNTP NEXT method to pull articles from one of our servers in similar fashion to a news reader. Software like "DNEWS" implements this service. On the other hand, a "push" feed requires that you run a news server that uses the NNTP protocol such as NNTPD or INN on one of your servers, and one of our servers running Diablo or Cyclone sends you articles as they arrive here.)
The name of your news server. For a pull feed, this MUST be the fully qualified canonical domain name of the system. (Nor will multi-homing allow you to set up a sort of virtual alias.) For a push feed, this can be an alias.
The email address of a news administration contact at your site. (This can be an individual, but an alias you can redirect when staffing changes will make your life easier.)
If you want a push feed, we need a list of hierarchies you want our daemon to push out to your site.

Before we can establish the feed, your machine needs to be up and running an appropriate daemon on port 119. Both DNS lookups of your fully qualified domain name and reverse lookups of your machine's IP address need to be working.

Be warned that a full feed runs 38-50 gigabytes a day, 80% of which is in alt.binaries. There are also many different software choices for running news services. SBCIS does not endorse or support any particular news software package. However, for your convenience, listed below are several popular news packages that are currently available.

For UNIX systems, popular packages include INN, which is freeware supported by the Internet Software Consortium (ISC), Typhoon, which is a commercial package written and supported by bCandid Software, and DNEWS, a commercial package from NetWin Software. news server from www.nntpcache.org, Netscape Collabra, is offered as part of the SuiteSpot bundle from Netscape, and many others are avalible.

For Windows and Windows NT systems, popular packages include DNEWS, Microsoft Exchange, and Netscape Collabra. These are commercial packages and information about them is available from their respective vendors.

The internet also offers other options. Please visit Internet.Com's Serverwatch for an article covering available news server software: http://serverwatch.internet.com/newsservers.html

Should you need configuration assistance with the news software package of your choice, please consult the product's documentation, the software manufacturer, or other documentation sources. SBCIS cannot support news software packages; however, for your convenience, we have simple configuration examples for INN available on our FTP server: ftp://ftp.swbell.net/private/netnews/

All of the newsgroups that SBCIS carries are listed in our active file. Descriptions for most of these newsgroups can be found in our newsgroup file. While both of these files are updated constantly, a fairly recent version is available at our ftp sites. Follow the links below to our ftp server.

ftp://ftp.swbell.net/private/netnews/active ftp://ftp.swbell.net/private/netnews/newsgroups

These files are too large to be transmitted via e-mail so please do not request copies of these files via e-mail. You may also obtain a "Master" active file from the Internet Software Consortium. They maintain a master list for all groups in Usenet.

ftp://ftp.isc.org/usenet/CONFIG/active ftp://ftp.isc.org/usenet/CONFIG/newsgroups

Your newsfeed request must be submitted in all lowercase letters, with one entry per line. Do not use any commas or '.*'s after the group names. Remember that feeds are hierarchical: if you ask for 'comp', you will get everything in the comp hierarchy; similarly, asking for 'misc.jobs' would send all 'misc.jobs' groups. If you want a full newsfeed, ask for 'all'.

Do not itemize every single group you wish to receive, but send the shortest list possible with hierarchical feeding. If you want most of a hierarchy except for a few groups, you should request the entire hierarchy, then specify the groups you wish to exclude:

* hierarchy.foo

* !hierarchy.foo.bar

* !hierarchy.foo.misc

Do not list out each of the subgroups you wish to receive.

If you want to do a PULL feed, your server will be DNEWS.PBI.NET or DNEWS.SWBELL.NET, depending on your location. You will also need to feed back to these servers (again, depending on location)

NOTE FOR MS EXCHANGE USERS: At this time, we cannot provide pull feeds to MS Exchange sites. We recomend you configure your site for a push (full or partial) feed.

If you want a PUSH feed, you should allow the following to act as peer servers depending on location:

cyclone-la.pbi.net
cycloned.swbell.net
cyclone-transit.snfc21.pbi.net

You will also need to feed back to the servers listed above (depending on location) We maintain several servers for feeding customers and peers. Customer's located in the Los Angeles/San Diego area (Southern California) will need to use cyclone-la.pbi.net, while customers in San Fransicso/Sacramento (Northern California and Nevada) will use cyclone-transit.snfc21.pbi.net. All other customers will feed from cyclond.swbell.net.

NOTE: The servers cyclone-transit, cyclone-la, and cycloned are for push feeds only. Pull feed customers should refer to the section of this document regarding to pull feeds.

All pacbell.net or pbi.net customers will receive feeds from a pbi.net system. All swbell.net customers will receive feeds from swbell.net servers. This method will allow the fastest, most direct route to your site.