If you do any heavy downloading on the Internet these days, no doubt you’ve run into a protocol called bittorrent. There are many bittorrent clients, from Azureus to Transmission to Tomato Torrent to uTorrent. There are dozens of them out there. It’s estimated that bittorrent takes up 80 percent of Internet traffic.
Before bittorrent, however, there was Usenet. Usenet actually predates the Internet as we know it. Usenet can be compared to the first text-based message board, where people from all over the world could post their message, then anyone could reply, either to the entire group, or just to the original poster.
Along with text messages came binary attachments. When the Internet was new, and connections slow, this wasn’t a big deal, since downloading anything of substance could take hours, instead of minutes. But as connections have grown faster, so too have files increased in size. Because of this, large binary attachments (such as music, movies, games and more), are often compressed and segmented. So, instead of downloading a single file, you may be forced to download sixty smaller files, then combine them on your own once downloaded.
To avoid missing pieces, a format known as .NZB (which stands for Newzbin), has sprung up. NZB files are simply pointers to all the files associated with a particular download. This means that instead of doing a search for all the small files that will allow you to combine them back into the movie you want to watch, you simply need to download the single NZB file, then use a binary downloader, which can read the NZB file and download the individual parts.
A new NZB downloading program for Linux has recently been released, called LottaNZB, and it’s one of the better downloading programs I’ve seen lately.
LottaNZB is actually a frontend (a graphical user interface), to HellaNZB, which has been around for a while, but has always been commandline-only. LottaNZB attempts (successfully, I think), to make it easier for the non-geek to download, repair, and combine Usenet downloads.
How does it work?
After installation, all you need to do to get LottaNZB working is start it up. You’ll be asked for your Usenet server information and account username and login, and you can also set where you want to download your files.
Above, I mentioned repairing files. Because most Usenet posts are one-shot deals (the uploader sends the files out and that’s it), there exists the possibility, either in the upload or in your download, for errors. And since the poster isn’t around to resend missing or “broken” pieces, you need to be able to fix the download. Par2 is the most common method. Using Par2, a user is able – using repair files – to fix missing or corrupt individual pieces to the download.
Usually this involves a separate program, but LottaNZB is able to do this on its own. In fact, using SmartPar technology, LottaNZB is actually able to decide whether or not it’s even necessary to download the Par2 files in the first place! This can be a huge deal if you’re paying for Usenet access by the Gigabyte, since unnecessary and unused Par2 files will simply be deleted if not used, or after use, so not having to download them in the first place saves time and money.
In the past, I’ve used Pan as my Usenet client, and in spite of loving LottaNZB, I’m still going to keep Pan installed. Why? Because LottaNZB is simply a NZB downloader. It isn’t a full Usenet reader, so if I want to read messages, or browse my favorite groups, I can’t use it. But in my mind, Pan and LottaNZB together make a great pair.
LottaNZB is still very early in its development cycle. In fact, version 0.1 was released only a couple weeks ago, and version 0.2 only a couple days ago. In spite of this, I’ve found it to be stable and a very solid program, and I can’t wait for new versions to see what’s next.
