Usenet from India?

Hi guys!I was wondering if there is any way to access the usenet from india?Firstly, are there any free servers we can access from here, and is there any way to get an NNTP server? (i know BSNL won't even understand it, if we ask them..🙂 If any of you guys have used the usenet from india, please help me!

what do you need USENET for? if its for downloading pr0n, moviez, w4rez and that kinda stuff, then come into the 21st century and visit torrent search sites 😛

if it's really for news, then blogs are the new hotness... !

have you tried google news or deja news?

edit: oops, not "google news" but "google groups" i think they let you read the posts in the NNTP servers, see Google Groups

hey vishal.thanks for the google groups tip. i've been there too...maybe i need to have a closer look. as for your question about what i'm looking for in usenet that i can't find in bit torrent land...rare, old, obscure films, mostly not english;old music, rare anthropological recordings, classical (both indian and western);....i can go on.most people on bit torrent haven't even heard of the stuff i usually look for!of course, if it also happens to be popular, by some quirk of fate (so few really good things are)...i can find it on torrents, and besides, most of the good stuff is on private trackers, that are more difficult to get into than the forts shivaji once built.and also, for many like me, with, shall we say, non-mainstream tastes, the usenet is where it's at, and i'm surprised it hasn't picked up in india yet. maybe, like everything else, it'll take a while.

hmmm, if im not mistaken, you dont need BSNL to do anything to provide USENET access... just point your newsreader software to whatever NNTP server is available to access - say some public server at nntp.blahblah.net or something like that...

and i am looking for gopher:// sitesAnyways I dont think so u would find any free *usable* nntp servers anymore, plus even if u really try hard get some you cant get access to all the groups. Like aalt.sex.fetish.leather may not work but you may have access to culture.india.corruption etc. Maybe the scene changed I speak of 4-5 yrs back when dejanews stuff was there? I really dont know. I progressed to egroups then taken over by yahoo & then went topica or some thing but then most of the underground stuff were removed.

hi guys!

@vishal: there are free servers which you can access with a software like grabit, like you suggested, but most of them are useless, with hardly any action happening (most of it is happening in the better servers, and they aren't free!), and also very unreliable, as they are just put up as test servers for a temporary period. also, if anyone's interested, check this link for a good how-to about accessing usenet (and it does mention that you need an nntp server, which in most cases, atleast in the countries they are posting from, are provided by their ISPs) Anyway, here's the link, and if you guys figure anything out, please pass on the knowledge:

Newsgroups guide for GrabIt - FileSharing Talk

@pita: i think you just might be right there...all the good, usable (as you so rightly put it) servers aren't free anymore. the ones that are (atleast the ones i've come across till now) are pretty useless.

by the way, i forgot to mention the speeds!
yes, usenet makes you almost max out your bandwith (something that is very rare even with well-seeded torrents). i tried out the free trial version of usenext, and got upto 240-245 kbps speeds (and mind you, i'm on a 256 connection!).
so there you go....one more point to back usenet.

none free m0n, you needya pay m0n for usenet, atleast i am aware of. plus link-removed replaced it. and gopher? darn year 1999://gopher ;-) they still exist? i doubt!netsplit.de they got a HUGEEEEEEEEEEE irc server database which gives away almost everything, you may even ask your identity they will give it to you. thanks so much for the identity which lead to identity crisis.