Newsfeed Ordering Information

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

1. 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.)
2. The name of your news server. For a pull feed, this MUST be the fully qualified canonical domain name of the system. (Nor will multihoming allow you to set up a sort of virtual alias.) For a push feed, this can be an alias.
3. The e-mail address of a news administration contact at your site. (This can be an individual, but an alias you can redirect makes it easier in the event of staffing changes.)
4. If you want a push feed, we need a list of hierarchies you want our daemon to push out to your site.

Additional Information

On September 9, 2001, our newsgroup server will no longer offer alt.binary newsgroups with combination of the following suffixes: sounds, mp3, cd.image(s), movies, multimedia, warez, vcd. Due to their nature, these are the groups that contain multi-part postings of digital files that are likely to contain copyrighted material.. For a list of customer FAQ’s, please refer to our web site at: http://global.pacbell.net/usenet_update.html

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.

Please be warned that a full feed runs 18-25 gigabytes a day, 80% of which is in alt.binaries. There are also many different software choices for running news services. Pacific Bell Internet Services 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 Highwind Software, and DNEWS, a commercial package from NetWin Software.

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.

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. Pacific Bell Internet Services cannot support news software packages; however, for your convenience, we have simple configuration examples by request. Examples are available for INN, DNEWS, and Cyclone/Typhoon using push feeds, and DNEWS using pull feeds.

All of the newsgroups that Pacific Bell Internet Services 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:

These files are too large to be transmitted via e-mail so please do not request copies of these files via e-mail.

Your newsfeed request must be submitted in all lowercase letters, in alphabetical order, 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. You will also need to feed back to the server.

If you want a PUSH feed, you should allow all of the following to act as peer servers:

news.pbi.net
cyclone-sf.pbi.net

You will also need to feed back to the servers listed above.

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