If you just want to read Usenet yourself, then putting your machine
onto Usenet is probably not what you want to do.  The process of
doing so can be time-consuming, and regular maintenance is also
required.  Furthermore, the resources consumed by a full Usenet setup
on a machine are significant:

    - disk space for the programs (a few Mb for the binaries, another
      couple of Mb for any sources you keep online);
|    - disk space for the articles - currently (as of May, 1996)
|      around 1.2Gb a day, although it is possible to minimize
      the amount of disk space consumed by articles by carefully
      selecting which newsgroups and/or hierarchies you wish to
      receive;
    - Communications bandwidth: for practicality, you should have
      either a fractional T1 or T1 (1.544Mbps) or faster NNTP link.
      It is no longer possible to run a full feed over 28.8K modem
      or 56K TCP/IP NNTP links; and
    - fees if you're paying someone to provide you with a news feed.

| A serious Usenet server system, carrying all of the standard 8 Usenet
| hierarchies, a large hunk of alt.* and various regionals, is typically
| going to need a Sparc 20/HP 9000/7xx series or better, with 64Mb or
| more RAM, and at least 8Gb of disk.  Alternatively, an equivalent
| Linux-based SCSI Pentium system has been used with success.  One
| particularly good high end configuration, is INN 1.4unoff4 on a
| multiprocess Sparc 20 or Ultra, with 256 Mb of RAM and 12Gb of disk.
| If you want to build inexpensive "building block" servers for wide
| geographic areas, multiple HP 9000/712, with 96Mb of RAM and enough disk,
| runs out of CPU, LAN and disk bandwidth simultaneously at about
| 500 simultaneous users.

A home system for a few people, can usually fit into a much smaller
machine, such as a Sun 3 or 386-class PC compatible, plus 25-50Mb of
disk for news.  Until recently, my home machine was an AT&T 3b1 (about
the performance of a IBM PC/AT) with 60Mb of disk - it was just fine
for a small newsfeed and a fair amount of mail.

You might choose, instead, to get an account on a public-access
Usenet site on which you can read news by dialing up.  See, for
example, the "Nixpub posting" articles in comp.misc and the "PDIAL"
article in alt.bbs.lists.  There are Freenets springing up all over
the place.

Even if there are no public-access Usenet sites that are a local
phone call away from you, you might still choose this approach,
especially if you only read a few (low traffic) groups.  Using a
public-access site that is accessible via PC Pursuit or some other
packet network might still be cheaper and/or easier than setting up
the feed, transferring the news and configuring your machine to store
news locally.

| You should be sure that the benefits you are going to get by storing
| news locally are going to outweigh the costs before deciding to
| proceed.  If you want news for a standalone machine, you can either
| set up a genuine news feed with the appropriate software, or you can
| run an offline newsreader under SLIP or PPP connection to an Internet
| service provider.  The case for reading and answering news offline
| (avoiding long-distance charges) is a convincing one.  To explain why,
| let me include an alternative perspective, from joe@jshark.rn.com, on
| working offline:  

When you get to long distance calls, reading the news on-line gets the
cost rising fast.  A few seconds to skip an article you've no interest
in, maybe a minute to take in a good one plus more time to save it and
download it later.  But when the whole lot is batched together (as
news), a) it only takes a few minutes and b) it's all conveniently
automated.  Sure, configuring the hardware and software may take a
(small) time - but it's something you only do once.

| For SLIP/PPP users, the new generation of offline newsreaders allow for
| fast processing of updates to newsgroups, retrieval of new articles and
| posting of replies and emails.  See also alt.usenet.offline-reader for
| discussion of such products.

Perhaps I see "news administration" as a simple task because
one of the ways I make my living is by operating news servers - I
am presently responsible for one of the largest non-University, non-ISP
news systems in the world - news administration is now second nature.
But I believe that, aside from the very initial stages, and provided
that you haven't cut too many corners in hardware, news administration is
relatively easy.  It should be almost zero maintainance on a properly
selected "small" system.

-----------------------------

Subject: Find a site to feed you news and/or mail.

In order to make your machine a Usenet site, you need to find other
sites on Usenet that are willing to feed you news and/or mail.
You might want to locate more than one such site if you want higher
reliability.

-----------------------------

Subject: Finding feeds for a UUCP site.

If you are going to be using a modem (and, presumably, UUCP) to
transfer your news and mail, then then there are several resources you
can use when trying to locate a feed site:

-----------------------------

Subject: By Comp.mail.maps

Find the postings in the comp.mail.maps newsgroup for your state,
country, or whatever.  Look in it for sites that sound like they are
local to you.  Contact their administrators and ask if they would be
willing to give you a feed.

Comp.mail.maps is archived at several anonymous ftp and mail
server sites, including ftp.uu.net, so you can examine map entries
even if the maps have expired at your news-reading site (or if you
do not currently have Usenet access).  See the article entitled
"UUCP map for README" in the comp.mail.maps newsgroup or archives
for more information about the maps.

The comp.mail.maps postings are also archived in rtfm.mit.edu's
periodic posting archive, which was mentioned in detail above.

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