# InterNetNews

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Usenet server software

Not to be confused with [InternetNews.com](/source/InternetNews.com).

InterNetNews Original author Rich Salz Developer ISC Release 1991 (1991)[nb 1] Stable release 2.7.2 / June 22, 2024; 2 years ago (2024-06-22)[1] Written in C, with some tools in Perl and Python Operating system Unix-like Available in English Type Usenet server License Mostly ISC license, with parts under other licenses[2] Website www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/inn/ Repository github.com/InterNetNews/inn

Rich Salz in 2009

**InterNetNews** (**INN**) is a [Usenet](/source/Usenet) [news server](/source/News_server) package, originally released by [Rich Salz](/source/Rich_Salz) in 1991, and presented at the Summer 1992 [USENIX Technical Conference](/source/USENIX_Technical_Conference) in [San Antonio, Texas](/source/San_Antonio%2C_Texas). It was the first news server with integrated [NNTP](/source/Network_News_Transfer_Protocol) functionality.

While previous servers processed articles individually or in batches, *innd* is a single continuously running process that receives articles from the network, files them, and records what remote hosts should receive them. Readers can access articles directly from the disk in the same manner as [B News](/source/B_News) and [C News](/source/C_News), but an included program, called *nnrpd*, also serves [newsreaders](/source/News_client) that employ NNTP.

A later improvement was the Cyclical News [Filesystem](/source/Filesystem) (CNFS), which sequentially stores articles in large on-disk buffers. This method, implemented by Scott Fritchie, greatly increased performance by eliminating the operating system overhead needed to deal with thousands of individual article files.

James Brister's *innfeed* program was also added to the package. Like *innd*, *innfeed* operates continuously to feed articles out to other servers, while the earlier *innxmit* processed them in batches. This combination allows articles to be received and redistributed with virtually no latency, and has substantially changed the nature of Usenet interaction by reducing the time for messages to be posted, read across the network and answered, from hours or days, to seconds or minutes. A similar earlier program, called *nntplink,* provided a comparable function, but it was produced independently.

INN is under active development as of February 2025[\[update\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=InterNetNews&action=edit). The package is maintained by volunteers, and development is hosted by the [Internet Systems Consortium](/source/Internet_Systems_Consortium). The current maintainer of INN is Russ Allbery, Julian Elie, and the ISC.[3]

## Notes

1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** The copyright dates in the LICENSE file begin with 1991.

## References

1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** Elie, Julian (22 Jun 2024). ["INN Github Releases"](https://github.com/InterNetNews/inn/releases/tag/2.7.2). Retrieved 12 Jan 2024.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-license_3-0)** ["INN License Information"](http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/inn/docs/license.html). *INN CURRENT Documentation*. 22 April 2008. Retrieved 11 July 2008.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-4)** ["INN"](https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/inn/). *www.eyrie.org*. Retrieved 2020-02-28.

## External links

- Rich Salz (1992). [InterNetNews: Usenet transport for Internet sites.](http://ftp.isc.org/isc/inn/extra-docs/innusenix.pdf)

- [ISC's home page for INN](https://www.isc.org/othersoftware/#INN)

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [InterNetNews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterNetNews) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterNetNews?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.