In the United States, these bulletin boards are divided into over 1,000 discussion groups called newsgroups.
Any user can post messages to any newsgroup.
These messages can then be read by any other user. When you invoke software to read or post articles, you use local software and a local database. Articles to be distributed beyond the local system are collected and sent as files to adjoining Usenet sites. These sites in turn add their items and then forward them to other sites. In this way articles are propagated throughout the network usually within twenty-four hours.