Usenet Essay

RESEARCH ON USENET | History and Design of UseNet | In 1979 a group of graduate students created versatile software otherwise known as Usenet. Shaping the future as we know it, this software replaced an older system known as BBS style-announcements; which had reached it limitations. Thus, creating Newsgroups in today’s computer community. Usenet, simply put is a bulletin board that electronically that facilitates postings and news readings with a few notices conveyed across the WAN for the whole world to see. |
7/3/2012

History:
1979:
The pioneers of Usenet are Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis from Duke University and Steve Bellovin from University of North Carolina. It started as a project to create a news network that would replace the old system known as BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) style announcement. This innovative news network would become USENET. Bellovin wrote the script in the first UNIX-based software while Truscott and Ellis were responsible for linking the two colleges together creating the “netnews” program by the link. Soon the software was made available to the public known as “A News” Usenet which was the first package. This package was referred to as the “Poor Man’s ARPANET” later to become their treasured USENET.
1981 – 1989: Usenet grew over a period of two years, vastly becoming obsolete with traffic overwhelming the ability of “A News” to efficiently handle its demands. Cal-Berkley student Mark Horton later known as Dr. Mary Ann Horton and high school student Matt Glickman were instrumental in overcoming the limitations of “A News”. The two students begin writing script for “B News” in 1981 which would become the most popular Usenet package of the 80’s. Horton and Glickman used Cal-Berkeley’s DARPA connection to create a link between ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) known as (government-operated “internet”) and Usenet. In 1983 more developing on “B News” was continued by a Purdue University graduate student Rick Adams. Mr. Adams maintains “B News” until 1989 during this period he recognized an increasing amount of traffic. This would lead to tremendous cost for site operator and administrators. Mr. Adams acquires a loan from USENIX (The Advanced computing Systems Association) to establish the nonprofit ISP (Internet Service Provider) called UUNET. The success of Usenet provided feeds, email exchange, and a large repository of UNIX software and documentation. With the success UUNET paid off the initial loan and started producing a profit within two years. To becoming the first commercial ISP and set the standards for all other ISPs in the 90s. Mr. Adams realized with continuing growth more server and administrators’ would lead to chaos prompting him to take notes on participating sites.
1986-1987:
A Georgia Tech administrator Gene Spafford took the notes compiled by Mr. Adams and established an organization known as “the Backbone Cabal”. The organization would support coordination and manage Usenet hosts with issues in article propagation; approve new newsgroups, and similar activities. The Backbone Cabal group was essentially responsible for organizing, initiation, and advocating “The Great Renaming” in 1987. Prior to The Great Renaming there were three worldwide hierarchies, net.*, med.*, and fa.* to organize these hierarchies based on whether or not they were moderated and whether they originated from ARPANET. In 1986 the original distribution protocol, UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol), depended on direct computer-to-computer using standard telephone lines. A University of California in San Diego graduate student Brain Kantor and colleagues from University of California in Berkley Phil Lapsley and Erik Fair are all co-founders of NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol). This NNTP technology would introduce cutting-edge networking concepts for Usenet. The students would extend to the Big Seven as follows: misc.*, comp.* sci.*, talk.*, rec.* and

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