Re: [LI] difference between newsgroup & mailing list

[Sitaram Chamarty <sitaram@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Dec 25, 1999 at 06:23:50PM +0530, Rajesh Fowkar wrote:

> Can anybody enlighten me between the difference between Newsgroup & a mailing
> list ?  Pointer to some link will also do.

(1) different software used to access it.  You need a "newsreader"
to read newsgroups.  Messages from a mailing list (such as this
one) are just emails, so any email client is fine.

(2) Different method of propagation.  "news" goes around the net
using a protocol called NNTP which you can think of (loosely) as a
"gossip exchange".  One computer says to another "have you
heard..." and the other one says "no I havent - tell me about it"
or "stop - I've already heard that one" (OK - I'm simplifying a
little :-).

Which computers does yours talk to is determined by peering
relationships between news servers.  Many news servers at the
bottoms of chains have only one peer - someone "upstream".  That
would be like living in the last house on the street, and getting
all your gossip only from the next house.

(I think I've beaten that analogy to death, so I'll stop here :-)

A news server will keep all its news available to its clients
(individual users) who access it using software like slrn or tin
or trn or Forte Agent.  If you have access to a news server, you
can get news, but only that news which the admin of that server
has decided to put there.

Mailing lists, on the other hand, go to individuals.  You have to
acttualy join a list to get messages from it.

There are lots more differences of course, but this should cover
the major ones.
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