The History of Usenet

Usenet is an internet discussion system that is distributed all over the world. The idea for the system was conceived by Jim Ellis and Tom Truscott, graduate students from Duke University back in 1979. It became a reality in 1980, allowing users to post and read messages, also referred to as articles, through newsgroups. The system can be described as a type of bulletin board system, accommodating the various internet forums that have gained in popularity today.

The main goal behind the idea of establishing usenet was to replace the local announcement program whereby the initiators had to establish connections with various people and organizations to pass on information. They began by feeding the system with mailing lists from the identifier and in this way the number of people on the system increased within a short period of time. Even though at this level it was still a bit hard for the system users to contribute to the groups the way in which they wished, the Usenet link was still very much welcomed and very popular.

The Usenet networks spread fast as they were affordable to the majority of those interested in the system as well as being easy to use with the links and connections. Three years later, the number of hosts had grown drastically, doubling and calling for expansion. It then became apparent that the network had to be distinguished into subsets to make it easy to manage.

It is true to say that that the Usenet was indeed the very first internet community for most public developments in the commercial use of the internet. It is actually through this system that the launch of the World Wide Web was announced by Tim Berners-Lee as well as the means by which the Linux project was announced. Most of the revolutionary work done in the technological world was made possible through the use of this system as it was found to be a much better system compared to other methods of passing posts and articles.

Even though one has to download and install a particular program to begin using the system, it has come quite a long way and has faced important changes and developments, making it easy for individuals to discuss matters that directly affect them. This is a system that has made it easy to communicate regardless of the fact that it has no form of centralized management.



Marion Marshall is a computer networking consultant who likes to write about Usenet and NNTP related technologies. If you visit his website http://usenetreviewz.com you can learn about usenet and astraweb.



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