Saturday 27 October 2007

News server: An alternative to torrent

I'm sure most of you already know about torrent, a method to download stuffs using the internet. however, for students living in halls of residents, some of the ISP probably block any downloading using torrent client. So, another alternative to download is by using a news server. Since all the materials are downloaded from server, the download speed is fairly constant and fast. Fast here means the downloading speed will depend on your internet speed. Faster internet connection means faster downloading speed.

For instance, if your internet connection is 6Mbps, you can download 1 episode of prison break (normally around 350MB) in 2 minutes only. I'm not joking, this is real.

How to download using news server? First, you need to subscribe with a news server. Unfortunately, this service is not free. you have to pay for it. However, it is not expensive. It will cost you approximately GBP 12 for 100GB. If you live at private house and uses broadband, you can check whether your ISP has its own news server. for instance, telewest used to have a public news server and you can use it for free. the best way to check is by calling your ISP and ask them. you pay for their service, so you have the right to use their server as well.

Then, you need to have a newsreader client such as GrabIt, alt.binz etc. This is the software that you need to download files. It is similar with bitcomet, microtorrent or azureus for torrent.

Then, you can browse or search files that you want at newsgroups. if you use alt.binz newsreader, you can search files (files that you can download using news server has the extension .nzb i.e prison break s03e05.nzb) using the client itself. no need to go to nzb websites.

give it a go and then decide whether you still want to use torrent or news server. if you want to try it, just buy 2GB quota which will cost you GBP 1 only. If you live at private house and your ISP has a public news server, you have to make use of that service. You can download for free and high speed as well. not like torrent which rely on other people to upload files. Not many people know about news server.

If you want to know more about news server, go to this website

http://www.slyck.com/ng.php

It will guide you how to use it and if you still have problems go to news server forum and you can discuss problems over there.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

6Mbps = 750KB/s .
to get 350MB, you need :
350MB / 0,75MB = 466,6 seconds or 7,77 minutes

it's impossible to get it in 2 minutes, you still get a bottleneck in your internet connections, your internet connections only 750KB/s

Pena Biru said...

Thank u for pointing that out. 2 mins were just my approximation. i didn't measure the time precisely when i wrote that it. However, what u calculated is correct, 1 byte equal to 8 bits.

chets said...

hi...can u please tell me how can i use it like torrentz..cause i am not able to figure it out....
i usually download from my office public internet..but it seems to be blocked due to some court orders

is there any application we can use to download movies and music using the newsreader