Proper noun

Singular Usenet

Plural -

Usenet

1. (Internet) A world-wide distributed discussion system consisting of "newsgroups" classified hierarchically by subject.

Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It evolved from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.

Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980. Users read and post public messages (called articles or posts, and collectively termed news) to one or more categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles bulletin board systems (BBS) in most respects, and is the precursor to the various Internet forums that are widely used today; and can be superficially regarded as a hybrid between e-mail and web forums. Discussions are threaded, with modern news reader software, as with web forums and BBSes, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.

One notable difference between a BBS or web forum and Usenet is the absence of a central server and dedicated administrator. Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing conglomeration of servers that store and forward messages to one another. These servers are loosely connected in a variable mesh. This is similar to the complex transportation plan of a city. There are multiple ways to get to any point in the city. If one of those ways is blocked, for some reason, there's always another avenue available to get there. In this manner, the User Network or Usenet allows newsgroup postings to reach their many destinations robustly. Individual users may read messages from and post messages to a local server operated by their Internet service provider, university or employer. The servers then exchange the messages among one another, making the messages available to readers beyond the original server.