5.6. Problems facing Usenet providers

Many encompassing problems face Usenet providers today more than ever.

5.6.1. Bandwidth Consumption

Multi-homed networks (those with more than one POP) using the Master Number Generator Architecture face the cost of a full Usenet feed to every POP on top of the additional bandwidth required to transit articles posted at a POP to the Master Number Generator and back.

5.6.2. Single Point of Failure

While the Master Number Generator Architecture facilitates Reader fail-over, the Master Number Generator itself is a Single Point of Failure. If the Master Number Generator goes down, no machine can immediately take its place. Several features are built into the Highwinds Cyclone product that ease the crisis of losing the Master Number Generator, but human intervention is still required.

5.6.3. Copyrighted and illegal content

Internet law is still in its infancy, but lawmakers are tightening the grip on all Internet industries. The recent Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) emphasizes the role that Usenet providers will play in eliminating copyrighted and illegal materials from their network.

5.6.4. Article and Thread Completeness

When a large article is broken into smaller parts to be posted and all the parts do not exist on the Usenet server, the article is incomplete. Similarly, if many small articles exist in a thread of discussion and one article does not exist on the Usenet server, the thread is considered incomplete. Many Usenet providers deal daily with customer complaints of incomplete articles and threads and currently, the only way to correct the problem is to increase your Usenet sphere of influence by attaining more Usenet peers.

SPAM ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Unwanted, off-topic, or duplicated Usenet articles fall into the elusive category known as SPAM. Fighting SPAM is not for the faint hearted, but centralized control is key to reducing it.