Those who never use torrents up your hand. I bet almost of you have used it. I’m going to introduce an alternative file-sharing technology that doesn’t employ peer-to-peer method. This technology allows you to utilize all the bandwidth that you have. Before you get too excited, I regret to tell you that this service comes with a little price to pay, but not too much though. If you have a superfast ISP, are a heavy downloader, and appreciate superfast download, Newsgroup is for you. There many lengthy guides on how to start using newsgroup if u ask Uncle Google but here, I’m going to write a summarized one for you. But don’t worry, I’ll provide the links if you need to read more about it.

What you need:
1. A newsgroup service provider

2. A program to download files from the provider

3. A file repairer (more on why you will need this)

1. A newsgroup service provider
The main difference newsgroup from p2p is the files (movie, games etc) are located on servers instead of your beloved peers. This explains why you have to pay for it. The great advantage of this is that you will have your bandwidth fully utilized no matter how wide your bandwidth is. If yours is 11 Mbps, you will likely to have 3000 KB/s download rate. I’ve achieved this speed when I was in my university’s network.

Currently the best offer among all providers is from http://forteinc.com/apn/index.php that cost you 15usd per month with unlimited download. It even gives you a free trial if you haven’t made up your mind.

2. A program to download files from the provider

There is nothing much to say about this. Basically, it’s like Azureus to bittorrent. My recommended program is Newsleecher which is easy to use and stable.

3. A file repairer

A file repairer is needed because unlike torrent, servers are not guaranteed to complete the transfer process, meaning that you will experience one or two missing files occasionally. With a file repairer, you can rebuild the missing file using standard algorithm named par file. Most of the files hosted by newsgroup are protected by par file. Recommended Software is Quickpar.

I have all of them, now what?
Now the fun part begin. To start download, you have to find the header file named nzb files. Nzb files contains the information that you need to start donwloading your data. I recommend these sites to search for nzb files
NZBsRus.com - One of the largest nzb indexer
NZBMatrix.com - nicer interface and lot’s of nzbs too

Now, open the file using nzb downloader and it will start the download in no time. After the download finished, double click the par file and it will check for missing files and will rebuild the missing files if necessary. Unrar your downloaded files and enjoy your new movies.

What is retention day?It is how long your newsgroup provider will keep the uploaded file in their server. Usually when somebody upload the file to server, the server will keep the files for certain amount of day. It’s depend your server policy on how long it will keep it.

You need more reading?

Heads to http://www.slyck.com/ng.php for Newsgroup 101 courses :p

So this ends my short introduction about newsgroup download.

I welcome your questions and comments.