Local USENET News Group Access

You will never see "permission denied" when reading news groups from news.idallen.com.  Permission is only needed when posting or cancelling news articles.

If you are on-campus at Algonquin College, or if you are using the Algonquin modem pool, or if you are using the Algonquin VPN, or the FreeNet modem pool, you are automatically authorized to post new messages to any of the news groups on the FreeNet Course News Server: news.idallen.com.

If you find your news software is refusing to let you post articles, you are probably connecting to the news server using a non-Algonquin address.  (Perhaps you are at home or at work and are not using the Algonquin or FreeNet networks.)  You will require a user name and password to enable access for posting.  That information is:

• User Name: ian
• Password: ian

The case of these access codes matters - type them lower-case as you see them.

Your news reader may need to be configured to ask you for this user name and password when you post an article.  To enable userid/password authentication in the Mozilla news reader, select the Server Settings menu for news.idallen.com (under Edit | Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings in the news reader).  Turn on "Always request authentication when connecting to this server".  (You do not need to do this if you are only reading news, or if you are posting from an Algonquin or FreeNet address.)

In older versions of Netscape and Microsoft Outlook, you can enable prompting for a userid and password by right-clicking on the name of the news server (e.g. news.idallen.com) and selecting Properties, then enabling the button "Always ask me for my user name and password".

To enable userid/password authentication in early Netscape news readers, select news.idallen.com and RIGHT-click on the name.  A menu will appear titled "News Group Properties" that will allow you to select "Always ask me for my username and password".

You may now post articles to any of the server's news groups, using the above userid and password for authentication.  (The articles will still be posted under your name and address - the userid and password is only used to gain access to the server.  Remember: You do not need the user name or password to read the articles.  You need the userid and password to post new articles from off-campus.)

Contact Ian! D. Allen: idallen@idallen.ca if you have access problems.