Usenet

This was one of my biggest motivations for moving to usenet. I don’t like exposing myself by seeding. I have a giant folder full of copyright notices forwarded by my ISP because of it, and I don’t want to pay for a vpn as it’s far more expensive than usenet and just moves the problem/target to the vpn provider.

But an ssl connection to a usenet server goes unnoticed… Plus WAY faster download speeds, far more consistency in available files, and less spam/garbage content (at least in my experience, anecdotal).

Torrents took anywhere from an hour to multiple days before either completing or giving up and trying a different torrent. And then there’s the seeding process ontop.

NZBs (usenet) take at the very most, 5min to finish or fail, at which point a new one can be tried automatically by sonarr/radarr if it had failed. Requests for media are now pretty much always ready to watch within 25min of requesting, and most of that is waiting for the library scan to trigger (I’m using SAMBA so filesystem updates can’t trigger scans automatically, they’re on a timer instead)

How do I get started with Usenet? I’m on a private tracker right now which has excellent speeds (maxes out my 500 Mbit connection usually, so I can’t tell what speeds I might achieve if fully utilized), but it would of course be nice not having to seed.

Things you need:

A Usenet provider such as EasyNews or Astraweb. Usenet services host the content. Be aware that some services like GigaNews just rehost from the same pool of servers as a lot of others, also a tad scummy. There’s a lot to look into here for features like connection limits, retention, and download speed. You can also purchase “block accounts” which let you buy blocks of data to use on demand with no expiration. Astraweb is great for this as a secondary source since they have their own servers and can host different content than other hosts. Look for promo codes online when signing up for one as you can usually get solid rates via referrals for like $7-$15 a month. Block accounts can run like $25 for 100GB of download.

A Usenet downloading client like SabNZBD for downloading NZB files (pronounced: newzbins)

An Indexer, such as Drunken Slug, NZBGeek, NZB Finder, or OMGWTFNZBs. Indexers help you find the content you’re looking for in the giant pool of hosted content on Usenet services. Usually good to have more than 1 indexer, even if using a free account on another. Usually run about $15 a year.

Usenet can be tied into Arrs programs like Sonarr and Radarr for automated downloading which makes things a lot easier especially when you set up your library correctly. See Trash Guides for help with this.

Personally I recommend running this all through Docker, but it’s not necessary.

Also even with Usenet, I’d still recommend a VPN. Can never be too safe.

You’ve done a pretty good job here, so I’ll just add this:

A map of providers and some info on their benefits.

www.ngprovider.com/current-usenet-map.php

There’s also a ton of info about usenet, how it works, and what to look for, on that site.