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NEWSGROUP COMPLETION
The low-down
Let's talk about why article completion is important, and how it
came about as a term for large alt binaries users...
Usenet was not originally meant to handle "binary" type
postings; text-only messages were the norm when first envisioned.
But curious Usenet posters determined they could upload binary files
by first encoding them into ASCII characters (using uuencoding originally;
more recently with yEnc).
NNTP servers are usually configured to handle certain size postings
-- anything above a certain file size gets broken into "parts"
and then uploaded into their appropriate newsgroups -- thus resulting
in the "multi-part binary". When the Usenet user wants
to download the file, they must get ALL the parts; else when the
file is decoded it will not work properly.
So, if all the "parts" are available for downloading,
then the binary is 100% complete.
And now the problems
Unfortunately, as the parts are exchanged with other newsservers
throughout the globe sometimes parts of the file are lost/deleted
due to many factors; SPAM filtering, improperly posted by originator,
server (mis)configuration, etc.
Fortunately many third-party newsgroup
service providers have partnered with many feed sites (sites
they exchange posts with) to help keep their completion rates over
95%; ensuring they have most (if not all) parts of the post required
to complete the original file.
It's not all bad :-)
Article completion rate only pertains to those Usenet users (sometimes
improperly referred to as "usernet") who are interested
in downloading large multi-part binary files.
Finding a provider with completion rates over 95% is very important
as any missing parts of a post will result in not being able to
decode (and use) the application/file properly.
Article completion is less of an importance to those users who
are only interested in reading text-only posts, or downloading single-part
postings (small jpg, gif, tiff, etc.)
> Click here for a list of Usenet providers
with over 95% completion rates
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