JANET, the UK's Main Academic Network, is to Drop Usenet as of Summer 2010. End of an era?

JANET, the UK's primary academic and research network that has been around since the 1970's, has announced to nntp-admins across their client organisation base that they will be dropping their Usenet services entirely as of July 31st 2010. The news first leaked from the announcements onto Twitter (#1, #2) and has since been confirmed by Rob Evans, JANET's Senior Technical Specialist, after we followed it up.

The number of users has been steadily declining, the current infrastructure is outdated, and we need to save (public) money.
Rob Evans, Senior Technical Specialist at JANET

They have also now made a public statement on the JANET Website:

There are now few active registered News Feed users and News Read users and the current infrastructure is nearing its end of life. JANET(UK) have therefore decided that it is no longer economically viable to run the service, especially in the current financial climate. We therefore will cease to offer the service when the existing contract expires on July 31st 2010.

News Read users are doubtless aware that there are alternatives such as Google Groups that they may wish to investigate and the current supplier has suggested that Feed users may be able to take over existing ISP feeds. If you would like to consider taking over the feeds please let us know and we will follow this up with the supplier.

JANET used to be known as the Joint Academic NETwork and, if a crude explanation, was the UK's first ISP, linking up the major academic institutions of the UK. As Usenet was around well before the advent of the web and the HTTP protocol, a substantial amount of traffic passing through JANET's systems in the 80's would have been Usenet traffic, especially as it's use throughout university departments grew. They offered two Usenet related services, a Usenet feed so that an organisation could peer to their own Usenet servers in-house; or their reader service which provided a direct connection like you would get from any provider.

The Future

What does this mean for the future of Usenet?

Usenet's main usage patterns have been changing rapidly over the past few years - the days where it was used mostly as a social, academic and research communication tool are swiftly dwindling; and this announcement only hammers another nail into the coffin for that usage pattern. However, as we've already mentioned, Usenet traffic levels are on the rise due to the new main usage of Usenet: binaries. With this ongoing change of use, will Usenet start attracting more attention from the copyright foundations? Only time will tell.

It also means that if you are currently accessing Usenet via JANET, that'll be stopping July 31st next year, leaving you with some options: no usenet, looking for a free provider (some are testing our their IPv6 servers) or paying for a provider, here's a quick list for ease:

• Giganews - Top of the range, you're paying a premium ($30/mon for an encrypted SSL line) but well worth it. 14 days free trial.
• Newshosting - Our first choice when it comes to value, quality connection. $15/mon for unlimited bandwidth and free encryption? Bargain. 14 days free trial.
• Binverse - Comes with a free client to get you going with ease. 14 days free trial.
• Easynews - One of the oldest commercial Usenet providers still around. Provides web access to Usenet via a browser interface (optional). 14 days free trial.

For transparencies sake: those links are affiliated but we only recommend services we'd use ourselves.