Usenet Addressing: Newsgroups, Newsgroup Hierarchies and Types
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As the previous topic mentioned, a key concept in Usenet communication is the newsgroup. Newsgroups are in fact the addressing mechanism for Usenet, and sending a Usenet article to a newsgroup is equivalent to sending e-mail to an electronic mail address. Newsgroups are analogous to other group communication venues such as mailing lists, chat rooms, Internet Relay Chat channels or BBS forumsthough calling a newsgroup a list, room, channel or BBS is likely to elicit a negative reaction from Usenet old-timers.
Like any addressing mechanism, newsgroups must be uniquely identifiable. Each newsgroup has a newsgroup name that describes what the topic of the newsgroup is about, and differentiates it from other newsgroups. Since there are many thousands of different newsgroups, they are arranged into sets called hierarchies. Each hierarchy contains a tree structure of related newsgroups.
The total collection of newsgroup hierarchies is in many ways similar to the domain name tree structure used in DNS. Each Usenet hierarchy is like a collection of all the domain names within a DNS top-level domain. Just as a domain name like www.pcguide.com is formed by appending the label of the top level domain com to the second-level domain name pcguide and the subdomain www, newsgroup names are created in the same way. They are created from a top-level newsgroup hierarchy name, to which are attached a set of descriptive label that describe the newsgroup's place in the hierarchy.
One difference between DNS and Usenet hierarchies is that while DNS names are created from right to left as you go down the tree, Usenet newsgroup names are formed in the more natural (for English speakers) left to right order. For example, one of the main Usenet hierarchies is the comp hierarchy, devoted to computer topics. Within comp is a sub-hierarchy on data communications called dcom, and within that a group that discusses data cabling. This group is called comp.dcom.cabling. Almost all newsgroups are structured in this manner.
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