subject: Nzb Searches [print this page] Imagine youre in a vast libraryImagine youre in a vast library. You need a particular book, but the pages of that book are scattered throughout the shelves. You have a card catalog and, while this can tell you that the book is available, it cannot tell you exactly where the sum total of that books pages are to be found. On Usenet newsgroups, this is sometimes the situation with filesor binaries, in newsgroup parlancethat are contained on the Usenet. A site called NewzBin.com invented the NBZ file format to make it much easier to download files.
The NZB file would be the equivalent of having a friend who could help you find all those scattered pages. The file format works in a very interesting way. Instead of having to log on to your newsgroup server to download every post that contains a part of the file youre after, you just download the NBZ file. This file contains pointers that will direct your computer to the right posts and download all the different parts of the file. Files on Usenet are sometimes broken up to make posting much faster, and this is the reason that there is a need for this technology.
That friend at the library, if they were like an NBZ file, would do far more than find your pages and toss them on the desk in front of you. The NBZ program will take the pieces of the file, put them in the correct order and reconstruct them for you into their original whole. This makes it much, much faster to navigate the innumerable articles and binaries on the Usenet servers and to find only the ones you want. These files are an integral part of using this service at a practical level and, likely, youll have an NBZ program on your computer in short order.
Technologies such as NBZ files are part of what makes the Usenet so convenient. If youve ever downloaded a multi-part file off of the Internet manually, you know what a time-consuming chore it can truly be. While Usenet may be one of the older technologies around, features such as NBZ are really still unmatched by the newer services out there. The NBZ file handlers will detail their process to you as its underway, allowing you to see if theres a problem with one particular part of a file and reporting errors, if they should occur.
