Types of News Servers

The InterNetNews (INN) package is the most popular news server software on UNIX servers. The Internet Software Consortium (ISC) currently maintains it, along with the INN website (http://www.isc.org/products/INN/). Fedora includes the INN package as a standard RPM file, although you have to use the custom installation if you want INN installed by default.

The following sections take you through the whole process of installing InterNetNews, including an overview of the package, things to think about when installing and configuring, and also some tips to help you avoid some of the sand traps that InterNetNews can land you in. Some of the information does get quite detailed because news servers present some unique challenges.

If you are an average home user, you probably will never need to configure a news server because you would be well cared for by your own ISP. However, system administrators at larger companies and ISPs, read on!

You can use a number of methods to implement a news server on a network, and the way you intend to use the news server determines how you must configure it. The following sections describe three of the most popular types of news servers on local networks: full newsfeed servers, leaf node servers, and local news servers.

Full Newsfeed Servers

A full newsfeed server receives all the available Usenet newsgroup postings from an upstream news server (a large, commercial server). Because it receives all the newsgroups, a full newsfeed server can itself serve as an upstream news server for other sites and provide newsfeeds to other servers. The other servers themselves might or might not subscribe to all the newsgroups. In addition to providing newsfeeds for other sites, a full newsfeed news server can also support newsreader clients that connect to the news server to read and post articles to newsgroups.

Each news server receives newsfeeds and forwards postings to one or more remote news servers. The full newsfeed server must have enough storage capacity to maintain the newsfeeds for all the newsgroups it services. If the remote news servers do not connect to download their newsfeeds on a daily basis, the newsfeed server must be capable of maintaining all the newsfeeds for the intervening days. This can require a very large amount of data storage capacity beyond the capabilities of systems that are common among home users and many businesses.

The other important factor to remember is bandwidth. Although news is mainly made up of text information, the fact is that there is a huge amount of it. Be very aware of the amount of data that is involved; if your Internet connection suddenly seem sluggish, you can bet that the traffic from the newsfeeds is slowing things down.

Leaf Node Servers

A leaf node server receives newsfeeds only from upstream news servers: It does not feed other news servers. This is the most common configuration for corporate news servers. Because the leaf node server does not have to feed other news servers, it does not have to retrieve all the newsgroups from its upstream newsfeed. You can pick and choose which newsgroups the news server retrieves from the newsfeed. The main role of the leaf node news server is to provide news services to newsreader clients.

The leaf node does, however, have to maintain a system for users to connect to the news server to read and post messages. This is often done using UNIX, Windows, or Mac OS software. Each client must connect to the leaf node to download articles from specific newsgroups, and it must upload postings made to the newsgroups. The leaf node must be capable of forwarding new postings to the newsfeed server.

Local News Servers

An organization that does not want to participate in the worldwide Usenet newsgroups still might want to use Usenet software to create its own news server to handle internal communications within the organization. Usually these communications need to remain private to the organization and do not need to be sent to all the Usenet newsfeed hosts around the world. This is likely the most common use of a news server you might be asked to configure.

Two methods are used to implement a local news server. An organization might create a standalone news server that does not receive any newsfeeds from Usenet servers. The server contains only local newsgroups that are used for internal corporate communications. Alternatively, on a Usenet news server you can create local newsgroups that are not forwarded through any newsfeeds in the Usenet system. This enables organizations to create their own local newsgroups that their employees can participate in without sharing their information with the rest of the world.

Thus, local newsgroups can be created on news servers that either are not connected to the Usenet network or that are connected to the Usenet network but do not forward the local groups to their upstream newsfeeds. Any postings to the local newsgroups appear only on the local news server. The Usenet news servers enable clients to post articles to both the local and Usenet newsgroups. However, only the articles posted to Usenet newsgroups are forwarded to the upstream news server. The local articles remain on only the local news server.