Newsgroups

This page will address common problems and solutions concerning newsgroup access. While any newsgroup client software can be utilized with your USA2net service, only Outlook Express will be directly supported by our Tech Support Representatives.

News Server

news.usa2net.net

Our news server can only be utilized while connected with USA2net - it cannot be accessed from another Internet provider. The news server uses a default port of 119, and it does not require a login name or password for access.

Newsgroup Setup Guide

You should think of the newsgroups as a huge bulletin board with sections for different topics. Each of these different topics is known as a newsgroup, and many of these newsgroups allow for binary attachments to share files of all types. Collectively, these newsgroups are known as the Usenet, and with more than 60,000 different newsgroups currently available (more are being added every day), Usenet is constantly growing. For more information on Usenet or to view the FAQ (rules) of a specific group, browse over to www.faqs.org and follow the Usenet References link.

*** CAUTION ***

Newsgroups are not censored in any way. There are more than 60,000 newsgroups available to choose from, many of which are adult-oriented. If you are concerned about your children having access to these newsgroups, you may wish to consider the installation of 3rd-party monitoring software such as Net Nanny.

First, we need to open up Outlook Express. Once it's open, click on Tools, then select Accounts. This should bring up the Internet Accounts window. Select the News tab. You should see a screen that looks like this:

Now, click on the Add button to the right and select News. This will take you through a Wizard. On the first screen, it will ask you for a name to display.

We would suggest that you do not use your real name as newsgroups are accessible by anyone with news access throughout the entire world. Once you have typed in a Display Name, click on the Next button.

On this screen, you will be prompted to enter your email address. Be aware that email addresses posted to the newsgroups are easily utilized by mass-emailing companies that can and will spam you. Since USA2net allows you five email addresses per account, it may be a good idea to contact us and request an additional email address that you would not mind if it got on mass-mailing lists. Once you enter your email address, click on the Next button.

This takes you to the most important part of the newsgroup account creation - setting up the news server. Edit your screen to match the one above exactly and then click on the Next button. This is the end of the account creation section. This will take you back to the Internet Accounts window. Note that you now have a News account in the News tab.

Now that we've got the news account setup, you can click on the Close button to close the Internet Accounts window. Once you've done that, Outlook Express will prompt you to download newsgroups from the account you just added. Select Yes and wait for it to download all the various newsgroup names from the news server. Once it has completed that task, you will see a screen that looks like this:

Now you can just use the scroll buttons to look through the list to find groups that interest you. Once you find a group you like, highlight it by clicking on the group name, then click on the Subscribe button to your right. To see newsgroups you've subscribed to, select the Subscribed tab. Once you've scanned through the listings and subscribed to the groups that interest you, click the OK button. You'll be taken back to your Outlook Express main screen. Look in the Folders panel. You should now see news.usa2net.net listed there, and you should see all the various groups you've subscribed to branching off from the USA2net listing. To go back and subscribe or unsubscribe to groups, click on news.usa2net.net in the Folders panel. Now click on the Newsgroups button to the right. This brings up the window, shown above, that will allow you to subscribe/unsubscribe newsgroups. To download message headers for available messages within the group, click on the newsgroup name in the Folders panel. Message headers will appear in the message listing box. Clicking on a message will download that message and allow you to see its contents.

Note: If you plan to utilize Usenet to download binary files, it is strongly recommended that you download Free Agent from www.forteinc.com - downloading files using Outlook Express is a very complicated process and will NOT be covered here. For more detailed information about using Outlook Express to access newsgroups, go to Microsoft's OE Support Center.