The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
Accessing Melb PC Newsgroups
from Another ISP
Ash Nallawalla
 ash@melbpc.org.au

You must be a paid-up subscriber to the Melb PC Internet Service, else this article does not apply to you. Melb PC has a few internal newsgroups that are not available to other ISPs. I started some of these newsgroups with the intention that they covered topics relating only to our Internet service itself and nothing else. My reasoning was (and is) that there are globally visible newsgroups covering over 40,000 topics and that they are a better place to seek your answers than limiting your audience to a few hundred of our subscribers. Others had different theories and we have a few internal newsgroups with very little traffic in them.
 
Anyway, enough people have been curious enough to ask for access to our newsgroups from other ISPs or their place of work. We cannot run an "open server", namely, one that can be accessed by anyone on the planet. 
This means that the resources of melbpc.org.au are available to its subscribers only and not Melb PC members per se. This is achieved by requiring a login name and password for the newsreader software. (You will see in the President's column that the Message of the Day is also available externally with this condition.) 

Regardless of what others say (often based on outdated information), I use Microsoft products and recommend them for business use simply because too many business products are based on them. I have never been afflicted with a virus or other nasty side effect because I practise safe computing. Many respected people recommend other products, which are better suited to home users because they are free or because they are better for the job. 

Forte Agent is a sophisticated news (and e-mail) program that offers numerous features that I would otherwise love to use, but it lies unused on my PC simply because of its user interface. I prefer the free Microsoft Outlook Express (OE) for news simply because of its user interface. That is why this article shows how I access the melbpc.* newsgroups from another ISP or from a corporate LAN with OE. 

Steps 


Figure 1. Start OE.  Click Tools, 
then Accounts to begin.


Figure 2. Click Add.  The Melb PC entry will appear  later in 
this window. The other  ISP should be the default account.


Figure 3. Supply your Melb PC account details. 
Note I do not use OE for e-mail, so I did not 
check the box at the bottom.


Figure 4. Our news server requires remote users to log 
on. Supply the same user name and password you use 
when you are dialling into Melb PC's modems. If your 
PC is not used by others, it might be safe for you to 
check "Remember password".


Figure 5. Leave this check box unchecked, even 
if it is tempting to choose "Local Area Network", 
otherwise you may get an "Unknown Error".


Figure 6. You must check the SSL option. 
This protects your password from being 
intercepted along the way.

That is it!

Agent 

At the time of writing, some subscribers have had limited success using Agent with Stunnel (http://www.stunnel.org) to negotiate the SSL connection. I trust someone will submit an article detailing a working solution in these pages.

Reprinted from the April 2001 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia