Unfamiliar w/Newsgroups Part II & THANKS

[steve2000x]

...to those who answered my previous ?'s...a whole new galaxy opened to my eys

but after dl'ing the newsreaders etc, and studying the various help's and faq's a couple questions remain -

* In my NewsAgent Data directory there's a file 00000AB9 ("DAT file") of 280 mb - is this normal? If not, how do I whittle it down? or avoid such an accumulation in the first place? (the answer is not apparent in the help guide).

*One of the newsgroups people were posting frequently/regularly then suddenly the posts drop off to almost nothing. Is this an inherent failing of newsgroups? Would it be the fault of my ISP? I tried two different newsreaders, then a free newserver the latter with even fewer posts.

* At this point my understanding is that posts are made to one central newsgroup server - which then communicates all posts to other news servers distributed about the www, including the one of my ISP. There is a delay while the posts propagate, and some are lost and not all isp servers will have all posts. (hence popularity of pay servers)
Is this correct?

Thanks to you experts who can offer insight here!

 

[Mark R]

In my NewsAgent Data directory there's a file 00000AB9 ("DAT file") of 280 mb - is this normal? If not, how do I whittle it down? or avoid such an accumulation in the first place? (the answer is not apparent in the help guide).

It's basically a file containing all the messages you've downloaded for a specific newsgroup. To shrink it, delete some messages and compact the database.

* At this point my understanding is that posts are made to one central newsgroup server - which then communicates all posts to other news servers distributed about the www, including the one of my ISP. There is a delay while the posts propagate, and some are lost and not all isp servers will have all posts. (hence popularity of pay servers)
Is this correct?

There is no central server. Each server contacts several other ones and they exchange the posts. Eventually, the post spreads as one server passes it on to the next, then it's passed on again and again until all the servers have it.