If you wish to use your own newsreader client, you will have to arrange for your own news server either via your ISP, a paid news service, or a free news server.

To increase your privacy, we have developed a proxy which will allow your desktop usenet client to connect through our proxy to a usenet server of your choice.

Note that your ISP's usenet server may not accept access from outside IP's. If you're having trouble authenticating to your usenet server, ask your server administrator if outside connections are possible.

Directions for installing and configuring ctunnel are provided below.

ctunnel is deprecated for Cotse.Net subscribers. SSH Tunneling is easier and faster. This information remains because ctunnel is still offered as a free utility to tunnel through http proxies.

While the following procedure isn't extremely hard to accomplish, it is technical in nature. There's no way to explain the information in such a manner as to eliminate the technical aspects of what's needed in order to secure an nntp proxy connection.

Novices who would like more information to help them configure Outlook Express 6 for ctunnel and stunnel may find a "how-to" contribued by a Cotse user helpful. All others should use the following directions:

If you have already configured your browser for stunnel and have already configured ctunnel for usenet, all you need to do is a quick edit of both program's configuration files, as follows (if you haven't already installed and configured stunnel and ctunnel, it is probably less confusing to start with those instructions and then come back and edit their configuration files, as follows): 

Set up stunnel to forward the upcoming ctunnel connection:

• Edit your stunnel.conf file to add the following section:

  [s2]

  accept = 127.0.0.1:120

  connect = tusk.cotse.net:8081

• Save the changes

Then: 

• Edit ctunnel's config.txt file to accept your news reader's connection, forward it through the stunnel configuration to the Cotse Proxy, then off to your news server:

  proxy=127.0.0.1:120

• Save the changes.

The above sets up the following:

• Stunnel will listen on port 120 for a connection;
• Ctunnel will connect through port 120 on your machine, through stunnel which connects to the Cotse Proxy, ctunnel will also listen on port 119 for a news reader to connect;
• Your news reader, set up to connect to your local machine on port 119 (which ctunnel is listening on) will go through ctunnel, through stunnel (SSL wrapped) through the Cotse Proxy to your preferred usenet server

This will wrap your nntp connection through a secure SSL tunnel to the Cotse Proxy.

Once you have ctunnel and stunnel configured as above, start stunnel, start ctunnel, and use your newsreader as you normally would. You may occasionally experience a delay in retrieving posts. This is to be expected.

ctunnel is deprecated for Cotse.Net subscribers. SSH Tunneling is easier and faster. This information remains because ctunnel is still offered as a free utility to tunnel through http proxies.

You'll need to download the version of connect-tunnel ("ctunnel") for your system: 

For different flavors of linux, freebsd, etc, go here and build accordingly: http://search.cpan.org/
dist/connect-tunnel/
connect-tunnel

Windows Users: (most versions have been tested to work with this version) download: www.cotse.net/ctunnel.zip.

Unzip the file to any folder of your choice.

Now you need to edit the config.txt file in that folder with Notepad or your favorite text editor: 

• On the proxy-authentication line, edit the user:password area to match your Cotse username and password to allow the proxy tunnel to login
• On the tunnel= line, you need to add your usenet server. You MUST have a third party usenet server to use this proxy. An example of how to setup the server is listed in the config.txt file. Something like 119:news.supernews.com:119 will work. This means your local machine will listen on port 119 and forward any incoming requests to news.supernews.com on port 119. Only your local machine can send this data as ctunnel only listens on 127.0.0.1 (your machine) for input from your machine
• Save the config.txt changes

Now set up your usenet client to connect to 127.0.0.1 port 119 using a proper username and password as given by your usenet provider (i.e., not your Cotse username/password).

The username and password are optional and only should be used if given to you by your usenet provider (not Cotse) -- this information will be passed to your third party usenet server for authentication.

Note that Forte Agent uses port 119 by default, so if you are using Forte Agent, you don't need to change this.

Double-click ctunnel.

Download new groups, download headers, what ever you want to do with your desktop usenet client. If everything is going well, your usenet client should work seamless with our proxy.

If you would like to setup a Secure SSL tunnel to connect from your machine to the Cotse NNTP Proxy, please see the "Stunnel and Ctunnel" directions.