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You might think there is one huge news server for the entire Internet. Actually, newsgroups are stored in parallel and on many local servers to provide reasonable access for Internet users. Messages sent to the local newsgroup server must be propagated to all other news servers supporting that group. The following anmimation shows how this is done. ISPs decide which newsgroups will be carried on their servers. Newsgroups take up valuable hard drive space and transmission bandwidth, so your ISP may choose not to carry certain newsgroup categories at all, especially ones known to contain questionable content. In order to keep conversations straight, a visual system of indenting responses to previous messages was employed which became known as threaded discussion. Initial Message 1                 Reply to Message 1                                Reply to Reply Message 1 Initial Message 2 Initial Message 3                 Reply to Message 3

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