What is News?

News, or more accurately Usenet, is a world-wide distributed discussion system. It consists of a set of newsgroups with names that are classified hierarchically by subject. Articles or messages are posted to these newsgroups by people on computers with the appropriate software -- these articles are then broadcast to other interconnected computer systems via a wide variety of networks. Some newsgroups are moderated; in these newsgroups, the articles are first sent to a moderator for approval before appearing in the newsgroup. Usenet is available on a wide variety of computer systems and networks, but the bulk of modern Usenet traffic is transported over the Internet.

Currently there are over 31,000 newsgroups accessible on the SVN network.

What is the addresses of the news server?

The news server is located at news.svn.net.

Why am I receiving an access denied message?

This message occurs when you are not currently connected to the Internet through SVN. The SVN news server is only accessible from hosts connected to the SVN network. If you need to access Usenet from a different provider's network, please check with that provider for appropriate Usenet news settings.

What are some of the local area newsgroups?

There are several regional newsgroups that may be of interest to users of the SVN network. The following is a short list of newsgroups that carry local content.

The sonoma.* newsgroups are focused specifically on Sonoma County. SVN is currently exchanging these groups with other local providers.

sonoma.general	General discussion with some relation to Sonoma County.
sonoma.forsale	Postings of items for sale in Sonoma County.
sonoma.test	This group is for test posts only. Post here to test your software configuration or to check local news propagation.

The marin.* newsgroups are focused specifically on Marin County. SVN is currently exchanging these groups with other local providers.

marin.general	General discussion with some relation to Marin County.
marin.forsale	Postings of items for sale in Marin County.

What are some of the regional newsgroups?

The ba.* newsgroups are focused on the San Francisco Bay Area Region. There are a wide variety of groups in this hierarchy, ranging from items for sale to discussion of restaurants, etc. There are also newsgroups that are focused on other regions, all across the country. Here are some ba.* groups to get you started:

ba.announce	ba.bicycles	ba.broadcast	ba.consumers	ba.dance	ba.food
ba.consumers	ba.forsale	ba.general	ba.helping-hand	ba.housing	ba.internet
ba.jobs	ba.market	ba.motss	ba.mountain-folk	ba.music	ba.personals
ba.politics	ba.singles	ba.sports	ba.transportation	ba.wanted	ba.weather