Discussion Groups

Discussion groups are lnternet users who have joined together to discuss some topic. There are many discussion groups on every topic imaginable, from cooking to biological science. Two groups are commonly used for business.

• Usenet Newsgroups: Usenet is a large collection of discussion groups involving millions of people from all over the world. This is the most formally organized among the discussion groups. To read Usenet articles, users use a program called a newsreader. There are a number of different newsreaders. In UNIX, nn, rn, tin, and trn are the most popular newsreaders.

• Listserv: A listserv is simply a mailing list developed on the large Bitnet network (not on the Internet). The listserv processor processes listserv commands such as requests to subscribe and unsubscribe, while the listserv mailer mails any message it receives to everyone on the mailing list.

Bitnet

Bitnet is a worldwide network, separate from the Internet, which connects well over a thousand academic and research institutions in more than 40 countries. Many Bitnet sites are IBM mainframe computers running the VM operating system. Each country has different name for Bitnet.