There are generally two types of people that use Usenet. Those people that pop in occassionaly to read the latest posts in alt.politics.socialism on the one hand, and at the oppossite end of the spectrum, the people who are online 24/7 downloading binaries as fast as possible. The ones that have a download queue stretching into sometime next week. For the download freak a good news server is of the utmost importance. Crappy servers translate into missing file segments and poor retention times, and thus a scourge of anyone pillaging the riches of Usenet.

The usual alternative to a bad ISP newsfeed is to go out and sign up with a separate third party news provider such as Newscene, Supernews, etc. These normally run you roughly $12-$15 a month but offer a much higher level of Usenet performance in return. Let's assume though for a minute that you can't afford the extra money or maybe you just don't want to pay it, what do you do then? It's not such a far fetched idea, after all the fact you're so interested in binaries in particular shows you're already averse to spending a little extra money. Come on now, do you really need a high speed news provider just to read the latest ramblings in your favorite Pearl Jam newsgroup? Or do those free MP3's, software, etc., factor into that equation at all ;)

If it's free news servers you want then it's free news servers you'll get with NewsWolf. As strange as it may seem, some people actually provide news servers that are open to the public free of charge. These servers aren't always the fastest or most comprehensive, but hey, they're free so stop your whining there, snaggle-tooth. This brings us to the second major problem with free news servers. Because they're free they don't really see a great big need to go out and promote themselves so finding them can be difficult. NewsWolf puts and end to that.

NewsWolf uses an internal database of possibly open news servers that it garnered from both Usenet and Web sources and checks each and every one to determine which are up, which are still freely accessible, and which are down for the count. Using this list NewsWolf connects to each one and initiates a quasi log on procedure. This ensures that the server is not only operating but won't restrict your access once you try to log on. That's worth mentioning only because some other similar tools only check to see whether the server is up or not. It doesn't help you much if the server is up but won't let certain people onto it.