Usenet newsgroups are propagated around the world through a system of 'newsfeeds' to News hosts. With over 30,000 newsgroups currently in existence and the sum total of daily postings amounting to hundreds of megabytes, it is not surprising that organizations running News hosts commonly opt for limited newsfeeds comprising just a selection of newsgroups. For the same reason, messages may be stored for days only before they are discarded to make room for fresh newsfeeds. Access Newsgroups can be read at thousands of sites around the world. From the user's point of view, one of the major differences between mailing lists and News is that mailing list messages arrive in your mailbox and that newsgroup messages wait for you to come to them.
Users read messages using a newsreader program.
Some WWW browsers come with an inbuilt newsreader or you may use a dedicated newsreader program. News host using the News protocol, enabling you to pull down as many newsgroups and their contents as you desire. If a newsgroup you are interested in is not taken at your site, you can place a request for it with your local web administrator. If you don't know whether your site has News access, check with your local computer support people. If you don't have access locally to News, there are also publicly accessible newsgroup archives on the web.