On 19 Oct 2006 19:01:40 -0400, DJ Delorie wrote:


"Mike Marlow" writes:
Oh - no posts got "dropped off" because of this thread. That's not
how usenet works.

Actually, that *is* how usenet works. NNTP servers have limited
storage space, and as new messages come in, old ones are deleted. On
particularly busy groups, small servers end up keeping messages for
less than a day, or even just a few hours.

So think of it this way - every new message that shows up, causes one
old message to disappear from the server. Forever. Did you read it?
No? Well, you'll have to find a server with a bigger disk which may
still have it (like google groups, for example).

Note that this is why many servers refuse to carry the *.binary groups
- they eat up disk space much faster than text-only groups, so one
binary post could cause hundreds of text posts to disappear.


Actually, that does not fit with what I know from my own accounts. The
providers I use both have stated retention periods, i.e., 30days for
text and 14 days for binary - or whatever they decide. I know of a
provided that offers 1200days retention on text.
Of course there might be providers that run their business different
but I believe the majors all have stated retention times and when the
traffic goes up they respond by adding new capacity - not by dropping
messages.