"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

I have NEVER EVER heard of anyone having a usenet client check
for new posts on a timed schedule the same way an email client
checks for new mail. That is absolutely crazy.

So how do _you_ get usenet posts?

When I'm in the mood to read (or post to) usenet, I fire up Netscape
communicator, which is one click away on my taskbar. That's if
Communicator is not already running (but minimized).

I have about 2-dozen different NNTP server's configured in
Communicator. They're listed in the left-pane, under the
"Inbox/Drafts/Templates/Sent/Trash" selections that are part of the
e-mail section. I really don't use Communictor for email for about 5
years on this computer, so those are just legacy bits hanging around.
The Sent folder, however, is where any usenet post that I make gets
archived (just as it would for e-mail).

AIOE is one of the listed NNTP servers. I open it by clicking the "+"
beside it (expanding the tree-view). All the newsgroups that I've
subscribed to for AIOE are then listed under it, and Communicator begins
the process of checking for the current message-count in each group and
comparing it to the last/previous count, and if they're different, that
indicates there are new messages in those groups and the number of new
messages is printed beside each group. At this point, Communicator
doesn't actually go out and get any message headers for any groups.

Now, if I notice that one of the groups actually has new messages, I
will click on that group (in the left-pane) and a list of the most
recent posts is displayed in the top-pane on the right side. They can
be displayed in a linear list (according to time-stamp) or sorted by
Subject, Author, or tree-view (by subject) depending on the settings I
last used for that group. New posts have their subject-lines indicted
by bold-print.

I click on any given post in the top pane, and the post is displayed in
the lower pane. It's a lot like reading e-mail.

If I click to a new group, all posts in the current group are treated as
"old" even if I haven't viewed all of the new posts. If I click between
groups, the new-message-count is updated when I return to the previous
group.

If I "roll-up" the NNTP server that I currently have open, and then
expand it again, the new-message-count is updated for each group.

Unlike the SMTP (email) setting for the time interval to check for new
mail, Communicator has no such setting for the NNTP (usenet) server -
and rightly so in my opinion. Because for usenet, you can pretty much
garantee that if you follow a dozen or so groups, not more than a minute
or two will go by before one of them will have a new post, so there's no
real point of checking for new posts on a timed basis - especially if
you leave your news-reader client open and walk away from your computer.

So I can see how anyone using a news client that performs scheduled
polling of the NNTP server for new messages could end up breaking one of
the rules on the AIOE server limiting how many sessions any given IP can
have during a 24-hour period. I realize that now because I didn't know
that there are usenet clients that perform scheduled polling for new
messages (because, as I explained above, I don't see a valid use-case
for such a "feature").