2006: Giganews Changes Usenet
Giganews Usenet History > 2006: Giganews Changes Usenet
As one of the first providers to offer unlimited service, Giganews has always maintained industry leading retention levels and has been providing high-quality premium Usenet access since its inception in 1998.
Starting in 2006, Giganews began to release improvements to its services which have revolutionized how newsgroups are read.
October 2006
Giganews released 256-bit SSL Encrypted Usenet Access for all members. Before the utilization of 256-bit SSL, many newsgroup users were forced to download newsgroups in clear text. This meant that any network between their computer and the news servers would be able to access and view the articles they were downloading. To improve privacy, security, and anonymity, Giganews developed cutting edge Usenet encryption technology. This brought encrypted Usenet access into the mainstream and provided higher standards for Usenet security.
February 2007
Due to high costs and technical hurtles, maintaining high retention in binary newsgroups is always a challenge for any news server. In February of 2007 Giganews raised the bar in Usenet access services and set a new standard for news servers everywhere as the first news server to announce over 100 days of retention in all binary newsgroups. To put this accomplishment in perspective, just about one year earlier Giganews lead Usenet with only 70 days of binary retention.
July 2007
Not to be outdone by our February ’07 upgrade to 100 days binary retention, Giganews quickly began upgrading its systems in mid-2007. This resulted in a significant increase in available storage and another “world’s first” for Giganews. This upgrade would grow Giganews’ retention from about 120 days (from an upgrade in April 2007) to nearly 200 days of binary retention by the end of summer 2007.
Giganews is proud to be part of the Usenet community and strives to continue to foster and lead in Usenet’s growth. We would like to thank everyone who helped us compile this Usenet History section. Without their feedback and guidance through the telling of the Usenet story we would never have been able to document all the amazing historical information we have covered in these documents.
If you have any insight into the events discussed in our Usenet History section, please feel free to contact us and we will be happy to review your feedback. It’s our goal to make this the most complete historical documentation on the birth and development of Usenet.
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