Tired and Frustrated with BitTorrents? Want an Alternative?

Usenet is the word which comes to my mind that has the capability to convert BitTorrent users.

Current BitTorrent users can be grouped into two main groups, Private or Public tracker users. Each has it good and bad points. Private trackers are invite only and usually have a decent selection of torrents. Download speed can be great but this can come at a cost of maintaining your ratio. Most private trackers expect you to seed a torrent to at least a ratio of 1.5. This doesn’t seem too much of a big deal unless you trying to get your ratio up at certain private trackers where many users have seed boxes. This can make it frustrating, as you will be able to download a torrent very quickly but to maintain your ratio you may need to seed that file for days/weeks. Uploading for lengthy times may not bother people, but it may really eat into your volume usage if you are with an ISP plan that counts uploads.

Public trackers are mostly a free for all that allows any torrents users to connect and download what they like. This translates into a huge number of torrents being available. The negative side is that these torrents may not be seeded very well and it can be common to have 1000 leechers to a ratio of only 10 seeders. Users on public trackers tend not to worry about their seed ratio and will stop uploading/seeding once they have downloaded the complete file. This can be lead to very slow speeds and if common where torrent files end up having no seeders and your download is stuck.

BitTorrents has been a lifeline to the Peer-2-Peer community after software like KaZaa and Napster were forced to fall on their sword due to court orders. It has been living the high life for the past couple of years due to the popularity of sites such as Suprnova.org and Thepiratebay.org. However, it seems that the tide is turning and these massive torrent sites are beginning to fall like dominos. Thepiratebay is on its deathbed, filelist.org has bitten the bullet, Suprnova went ages ago, and they keep on being taken down.

Every day it is getting harder to find those Bittorrent files and gradually everything is going underground. Maybe it is time to change you habit and ditch your BitTorrent addiction? Usenet can be the solution. What is Usenet? It is a distributed worldwide discussion system that consists of “newsgroups”.

There are two main reasons why Usenet is better than BitTorrent. Speed – Speed is king, with Usenet you are only limited by your ISP connection speed. No need to worry about seeder/leecher ratio. You always download at the max speed with Usenet. Secondly, you don’t need to worry about seeding files etc. Download and that is it.

Newsgroups were popular back in the first years of the Internet. Being a text format, low bandwidth method to exchange information, Newsgroups were usually accessed via your Email software. But since those days, it has transformed into a file transferring system via Binary newsgroups. This allows users to download complete files as the files are divided up into smaller parts, which are usually .rar compressed.

Now before your eyes start to glaze over and those who may not be too computer savvy and are starting to think, Usenet might be too difficult to understand. Don’t worry, with certain software, downloading from Usenet can actually be easier and less hassle than BitTorrent files.

Firstly, many different software applications can be used for accessing Usenet and the files. I’m just going to list one example of each type of application. The mentioned software may not be the best but other users have found it able to handle the tasks with ease.

Binary Newsgroup access used to be offered free by nearly all ISP’s. But due to bandwidth issues, most ISP’s have banned free access to binary newsgroups. There are a couple of Usenet providers. Probably one of the most popular and cheapest is Astraweb. They provide download access to Usenet binary Newsgroup servers. Plans can start from only $10 a month for unlimited access or they even have pay by download plans. The pay by download plans can be a good way to test out Usenet. The 180 GB for $25 seems to be a popular plan. Now remember, Astraweb only provide access to their Usenet server.

You will now have to download software, which will allow you to download files from Usenet. Now, you have many choices when it comes to Usenet downloading software. Grabit seems to have a nice layout and isn’t that difficult to use. Think of Grabit for Usenet as Utorrent is to BitTorrent. You can use Grabit to browse Usenet and to search for specific words even without downloading the headers. But to use their search function without downloading headers costs from $2.49 a month.

Due to the sheer number of files on Usenet, searching can be a big hassle. An alternative to Grabit it and other pay to search software is a website called Newzleech. This is a free website where you can instantly search for any files on Usenet. Once you have located the file you want to download from Usenet, you can also use Newzleech to grab the .nzb file to import directly to Grabit for download. The .NZB file is the equivalent of a torrent file. It doesn’t actually contain the files you are trying to download. It just contains instructions on what the files are and where they are located. Once the NZB file is downloaded, Grabit should automatically open the file and proceed to download the files directly from the server.

Obviously, you will have to set up the preferences like where to store the downloaded files and the Usenet server address before you start that stage. Grabit does have the option to check the downloaded files for any corruption and to re-download the corrupted parts. Grabit can be a bit hit and miss with this part so you might need just one more piece of software to complete the Usenet puzzle.

Just a little background information on Par2 files. Par2 files can play a very important part when it comes to downloading from Usenet. Usually when you download from Usenet, there will be .rar files and .par2 files. These Par2 files will the error checkers. If a file is incomplete or corrupted, Par2 files in conjunction with software like Quickpar can quickly check the files and fix the files all automatically. This I believe has the power to surpass BitTorrent for file stability.

In Summary to ditch the BitTorrent addiction, you need to do the following...

Astraweb - Access to UseNet Server

Grabit – software to download files from UseNet

Newzleech – website to search Usenet for files

Please visit my site for any updates. Softwaru.com