One of the first commands you might try is help . The response you get generally depends upon whether the server believes you are a remote NNTP server or a newsreader, as there are different command sets required. Connected to localhost. The numbers you see in the output listing are response codes and are used by the server to indicate success or failure of a command. All NNTP commands are case insensitive, so you may enter them in either upper- or lowercase.
Every news article is assigned a unique message ID when it is created.
When the article has been transmitted, the receiving serve issues another response code indicating whether the article transmission was successful. To activate these commands, the news server has to be operating in reader mode. Most news servers default to reader mode, unless the IP address of the connecting host is listed as a news-forwarding peer. NNTP reader mode has a lot of commands. Many of these are designed to make the life of a newsreader easier.