How to create and manage newsfeeds in Exchange 2000 Server (319346)

SUMMARY

This step-by-step article describes how to create and manage newsfeeds. Internet newsgroups (or USENET) are a collection of discussion forums that cover a diverse range of subjects. Many organizations may want to monitor, contribute to or support and moderate such newsgroups, as they can be an effective form of marketing or a useful source of knowledge and news. Although unlimited access to all newsgroups is not typically recommended, it is relatively easy to configure Exchange 2000 Server or Exchange Server 2003 to download certain Internet newsgroups, and then display them as public folders in Microsoft Outlook. Your users can then read and, if required, post to those newsgroups.

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Requirements

The following list outlines the recommended hardware, software, network infrastructure, and service packs that you need:

• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server with Service Pack 2 (SP2)
• Active Directory
• Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 with Service Pack 1 (SP1)

  -or-

  Microsoft Exchange Server 2003

This article assumes that you are familiar with the following topics:

• Microsoft Exchange System Manager

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How to plan newsgroups

You must know the names of the newsgroups to which you want to subscribe. Newsgroup names are of the format alt.topicname, alt.topicname.subject1, alt.topicname.subject2. If you specify alt.topicname.*, you subscribe to all newsgroups under alt.topicname.

You can also exclude newsgroups in the hierarchy. If you have included alt.topicname.* but you do not want alt.topicname.subject, you can exclude that newsgroup when you set up the newsfeed. However, you can only exclude a newsgroup if you have previously included the group in which it is contained.

Note If you do not manually enter the newsgroups to which you want to subscribe and you maintain the default setting asterisk (*), the result is that you subscribe your organization to all newsgroups.

You must obtain the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of your Internet service provider's (ISPs) news server. This name is typically in a format that is similar to news.example.com. You can use an Internet Protocol (IP) address to connect to a news server, but your newsfeed mail stops responding if your ISP changes the IP address of their server. Therefore, it is more reliable to use an FQDN. You can test the FQDN of the ISP news server by using the Ping.exe utility. For example, from a command prompt, type ping news.example.com, and then press ENTER. This test is successful if you receive replies from the remote computer.

Decide whether your server is to function as a Peer, a Master or a Slave in relation to other Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) servers. A Peer server is not subordinate to other NNTP servers, which includes those of your ISP. It also identifies new articles for itself. A Master server identifies articles for a Slave server. For most implementations, create a Peer server.

Note After you create a newsfeed, if you want to change the role of the news server you must delete and recreate the feed.

You also must decide whether to create a pull feed or a push feed. When you use a pull feed, your server requests newsgroups, which are pulled onto your NNTP server at the times that you select. When you use a push feed, your ISP pushes the postings at times that they select. Push newsfeeds are more appropriate where you are subscribing to a very large number of newsgroups, as it permits your ISP to control the times that they send postings to your news server.

Note Dial-up connections always use pull feeds. You can also configure inbound and outbound feeds separately. This procedure permits you to perform load-balancing by dividing the inbound and outbound news feeds among different NNTP servers. You also must have separate inbound and outbound feeds if the NNTP server acts as a Master to another NNTP server.

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How to add a newsfeed

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Exchange, and then click System Manager.
2. In the left pane of Exchange System Manager, click Servers, and then click the server that you want to configure.
3. Expand Protocols, expand NNTP, and then double-click Default NNTP Virtual Server.
4. In the right pane of the Exchange System Manager snap-in, right-click Feeds, point to New, and then click Feed.
5. When the New NNTP Feed Wizard appears, type the FQDN of your ISP's news server, for example, news.example.com, and then click Next.
6. Under Select the remote server role, click the role that defines the remote server (for example, click Peer), and then click Next.
7. Click to select the check boxes of the type of newsfeeds that you want this server to provide. For example, if you want this server to provide both Inbound and Outbound newsfeeds, select the Inbound feed and the Outbound feed check boxes. Additionally, when you select the Inbound feed check box, click the type of inbound feed that you want this server to obtain from your ISP's news server. For example, to configure your server to pull newsfeeds from the remote server, click Pull articles from the remote server. If you want to configure your server to accept a push feed from the remote server, click Accept a push feed from the remote server. Click Next.
8. If you clicked Pull articles from the remote server in the preceding step, select the time that you want to start downloading newsfeed articles, and then click Next.
   
   Note Your server will not receive postings that have timestamps earlier than the time indicated.
9. Under Newsgroups, note that an asterisk (*) is the default entry. This entry configures your server to download all newsgroups. If you do not want to download all newsgroups, click *, click Remove, click Add, in the Add Newsgroup dialog box, type the name of the newsgroup that you want, click OK, and then when you have completed adding newsgroups, click Finish.
   
   Note This works only on a Pull feed, not an inbound Push feed.
   
   Note Type the newsgroup to which you want to subscribe in the category.topicname.subject format. For example, to add the Microsoft Windows XP general discussion newsgroup, type microsoft.public.windowsxp.general.

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How to configure a newsfeed

After you create a newsfeed, you may want to configure the newsfeed. To do so:

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Exchange, and then click System Manager.
2. In the left pane of Exchange System Manager, click Servers, and then select the server that you want to configure.
3. Expand Protocols, expand NNTP, double-click Default NNTP Virtual Server, and then select the Feeds object. This procedure permits you to view the newsfeed that you configured earlier in the right pane.
   
   
4. Right-click the newsfeed that you created, and then click Properties. The NewsServerName Properties dialog box appears. This dialog differs, depending on whether the newsfeed is configured as Inbound, Outbound or both.
   
   Note The following steps assume that the newsfeed is configured as both inbound and outbound.
5. To disable a newsfeed, and to prevent it from sending or receiving messages, click to clear the Enable feed checkbox.
6. To change to another newsfeed server, enter the remote server's FQDN or IP address under Remote server name.
7. If you want to prevent the receipt of control messages, click to clear the Allow control messages check box. Control messages are sent by other NNTP administrators and are responsible for newsgroup creation, removal, and message cancellation. These newsgroups are control.cancel, control.newsgroup and control.rmgroup. If you accept these control messages, any new newsgroups in the sub-set of the hierarchy to which you are subscribing are automatically included.
   
   A unique path ID generated by remote server applies to outbound feeds and is the value added to all messages that are sent to the remote server at the end of the feed.
8. The Outbound IP port remains set at 119 unless you are setting up an NNTP network that is not connecting to USENET news servers, in which case you can use any port providing it does not conflict with those used by other services, such as Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).
9. Under Pull articles onward from, you can change the time from when you want to receive messages from the subscribed newsgroups.
10. Click the Subscription tab. This indicates the newsgroups to which you currently subscribe. To add additional newsgroups, click Add, and then type the newsgroup that you want in the Add Newsgroup dialog box.
    
    Note If you want to exclude a newsgroup, select the Exclude option, and then type the name of the newsgroup.
    
    Note This works only on a Pull feed, not an inbound Push feed.
11. To remove newsgroups from the Newsgroup list, click the newsgroup item, and then click Remove.
12. On the Schedule tab, you can configure how often this newsfeed checks for new messages. If you have a dialup connection, you may set this to only one time every two hours. Microsoft does not recommend that you set the Run interval to less than 15 minutes unless it is for testing purposes.
13. The number in the Maximum number of attempts box signifies how many times that this newsfeed attempts to contact the remote server. If you have clicked the Automatically disable feed checkbox, this newsfeed is disabled if it cannot contact the remote server in the Maximum number of attempts setting.
14. Click OK to accept the changes to the newsfeed properties and to close the NewsServerName Properties dialog box.

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How to confirm that your newsfeed functions

To confirm that your newsfeed functions, click the Newsgroups object under the Default NNTP Virtual Server object. The right pane contains the list of subscribed newsgroups.

To test that you receive messages from the newsfeed, start Microsoft Outlook and in the Folders list, expand Public Folders, expand All Public Folders, and then expand Internet Newsgroups. The newsgroups to which you have subscribed are displayed.

Double-click a newsgroup to view all of the messages posted to that newsgroup from the time that you selected when you configured the newsfeed. To verify that an outbound feed is functioning, post a reply or create a new posting. However, only send the test messages to newsgroups specifically set up for testing, such as alt.test.

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Troubleshooting

You can resolve most issues that you may experience with NNTP by ensuring that you enter the correct FQDN of your ISP's newsgroup server, and by correctly specifying the newsgroups to which you want to subscribe.

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