NNTP is a unique way of supporting special interest groups without requiring a dial-up connection to some central server. The newsgroups are similar to bulletin board systems with one exception: Individuals can connect to all of the newsgroups and view all of the postings on multiple newsgroups rather than connecting to one server and then having to connect to another. By using NNTP, special interest groups are accessible to everyone on the Internet, and postings can be distributed throughout the Internet.

The way it works is actually simpler than it may sound. A large mainframe (owned and operated by a third party) is used to poll news servers from around the world. These specialized servers collect postings from local connections and forward them to the mainframe. While sending postings, the news servers also download any new postings that may be in the mainframe computer. However, news servers only download postings for newsgroups to which they have subscribed.

Subscription to a newsgroup is free; all it takes is configuring the server to query the main computer for all postings within that newsgroup, which is an autonomous function. The local server then stores those postings for its subscribers. If the news server were owned by America Online, all AOL customers would connect to the AOL news server, which gets its postings from the mainframe.

The subscribers can only receive postings from newsgroups to which their service subscribes, which allows service providers to pick and choose...