Eternal September
eternal-september.org · 2 records in Storage · JSON
Records 2
- fails: quotaEternal September (news.eternal-september.org) — free NNTP read/write
Storagefree tieridentity country-phone?card?limit per-object-capevidence reportedstale on 2026-11-05
- fails: quotausenet / nntp free providers
Storageno free tieridentity email?card?evidence reportedstale on 2026-11-05
- Free allowance
- No byte quota. Free read AND write access to all text newsgroups after online registration.
- Verdict
- fails: quotathe free allowance is too small to matter
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- country-phone?placeholder, not evidence; card unknown, phone unknown
- Binding limit
- per-object-capper-object-cap: 'No articles larger than 1000 KB
- Evidence
- reported5 sources; a third party said so
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-05checked 2026-10-21 (inherited); stale on 2026-11-05
| Free tier | No byte quota. Free read AND write access to all text newsgroups after online registration. 281 hierarchies, alt.* alone is 8,728 groups, free.* is 1,284. Retention: '3 years for de.*, 160 days for the Big 8, 130 days for alt.*, 90 days for other hierarchies'. unit mixed; metered on unstated |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
per-object-cap: 'No articles larger than 1000 KB' — hard 1 MB per article, and 'no binaries in text-only groups': binaries are only allowed in alt.binaries.* / de.alt.dateien.*, which this server does NOT carry ('no binaries'). Request-rate: anti-spam gates — no more than 3 distinct From: addresses per 24 h, 5 per 7 days, 8 per 30 days ('Excessive nymshifting'), with cancellation at 12 nyms/60 days. Retention: 90-160 days for most hierarchies, 3 years only for de.*. |
| Identity | country-phone (inferred, not read) not published |
| Egress | Free; server has a 1 Gbit connection to several backbones and peers with 40+ sites. Articles are world-readable and propagate to every peer, so egress is effectively subsidised by the whole Usenet mesh. |
| Per-object cap | per-object-cap: 'No articles larger than 1000 KB (1000000 bytes) |
| Retention | Retention: '3 years for de.*, 160 days for the Big 8, 130 days for alt.*, 90 days for other hierarchies' (160 days) |
| Interface | rest rest |
| Tooling | Standard NNTP (RFC 3977) on port 119/563. Every Usenet client works: tin, slrn, Gnus, Thunderbird, Pan; programmatically via nntplib (Python) or any NNTP library. No bespoke wrapper needed. The docs give exact per-client auth config for ~10 clients. |
| Composes with | Per-record unlimited is the theoretical shape: a text article can carry base64, and there are 8,728 alt.* groups x 1,284 free.* groups x unlimited articles each. The multiplier would be 'groups x posts', which is effectively unbounded. BUT the per-record cap (1000 KB) and text-only rule kill it as a bulk store — see limits. |
| Reliability | Two technical blockers found by probing: (1) NNTP ports are unreachable from this network — TCP to news.eternal-september.org:563 timed out and:119 also timed out, so the transport may be firewalled depending on where you run; (2) accounts are auto-closed after 18 months of inactivity. Also note the server deliberately does NOT honour Cancels/Supersedes from other servers ('an article stored on our server can neither be deleted by a Cancel nor be overwritten by a Supersedes'), which is a rare retention plus. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 5
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-21 | www.eternal-september.org/ | 'free read and write access to all text newsgroups'; 'no binaries'; retention '3 years for de.*, 160 days for the Big 8, 130 days for alt.*, 90 days for other hierarchies' |
| 2026-10-21 | www.eternal-september.org/index.php?showpage=terms | 'No articles larger than 1000 KB'; 'no binaries in text-only groups' |
| 2026-10-21 | www.eternal-september.org/index.php?showpage=faq | nymshifting limits (3/24h, 5/7d, 8/30d); 'Accounts with Eternal-September will be automatically closed after 18 months of inactivity'; Cancels/Supersedes deliberately not honoured |
| 2026-10-21 | www.eternal-september.org/hierarchies.php | 281 hierarchies; alt.* 8,728 groups; free.* 1,284 groups |
| 2026-10-21 | source not published | probe: TCP news.eternal-september.org:119 and :563 -> both timeout (blocked from this network) |
More fields 1
| dead end | {"failure_class": "retention","why": "No byte quota. Free read AND write access to all text newsgroups after online registration. 281 hierarchies, alt.* alone is 8,728 groups, free.* is 1,284. Retention: '3 years for de.*, 160 days for the Big 8, 130 days for alt.*, 90 days for other hierarchies'.","retry_when": null,"first_recorded": "2026-10-21"} |
|---|
Unknown values 2
- per object cap notes: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
- retention notes: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
usenet / nntp free providers
Storage- Free allowance
- No free binary provider with usable retention exists.
- Verdict
- fails: quotathe free allowance is too small to matter
- Cost
- no price stated
- Identity
- email?placeholder, not evidence; card unknown, phone unknown
- Binding limit
- noneno named constraint binds
- Evidence
- reported2 sources; a third party said so
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-05checked 2026-10-21 (inherited); stale on 2026-11-05
| Free tier | No free binary provider with usable retention exists. The only genuinely free, posting-allowed server found (Eternal September) is text-only, explicitly 'no binaries', with 130-day… unit none; metered on none |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Identity | email (placeholder) not published |
| Egress | not recorded |
| Interface | unknown |
| Tooling | not recorded |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 2
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-21 | www.eternal-september.org/ | the text of Free tier, above |
| 2026-10-21 | 4usenet.com/articles/best-free-usenet | cited as the basis of the rejection: No free binary provider with usable retention exists. The only genuinely free, posting-allowed server found (Eternal September) is text-only, explicitly 'no binaries', with 130-day retention |
More fields 1
| dead end | {"failure_class": "retention","why": "No free binary provider with usable retention exists. The only genuinely free, posting-allowed server found (Eternal September) is text-only, explicitly 'no binaries', with 130-day…","retry_when": null,"first_recorded": "2026-10-21"} |
|---|
Unknown values 7
- chaining: no value was recorded for this field
- egress terms: no value was recorded for this field
- interface: the access interface was not established
- per object cap notes: no value was recorded for this field
- per object cap stated: no value was recorded for this field
- retention stated: no value was recorded for this field
- tooling: no value was recorded for this field