NNTP Proxy Server?

[ChromWolf]

I've gotten into a few newsgroups lately, but my ISP (as do most others, I hear) only has NNTP message retention of about 3 days. Sometimes, I'm gone for the weekend, and I miss articles that have been posted. So, since I run my own server box, I was thinking I could somehow allow it to grab the nntp information, set it up to retain the messages longer, and just point my news reader to that, especially if it would mean I wouldn't have to pay for a more robust NNTP service--I'm not that into newsgroups...

How do I do that, exactly? IIS just seems to be a full server itself for hosting newsgroups, while I just want to grab the ones already out there and retain them longer. Do I need an NNTP Proxy Server? Should I point the NNTP proxy server, if that's what I need, at my own ISP's actual NNTP server, and if so, will I run into problems with message retention, or will it not matter since I'm downloading messages to my own server?

Also, could anyone suggest software, preferably open source or otherwise freeware? The ones I've been able to google are all for various flavors of Linux, while I run Windows XP Pro (and Windows Server 2003 on the server box).

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[Statica]

Instead of running a server for it, why not use a Usenet reader that will actually let you schedule header and message downloads like: News Rover

[ChromWolf]

For several good reasons, actually...

1. I really like my current newsgroup reader, Xnews, largely because it's free, handles what I want it to handle, and I know how to navigate within it. Not a spectacular reason, though, so we move on to...

2. News Rover, at least in its fully functional state, is not free, but costs $30 (and is really only free for 30 days), and the whole point of my asking this question was not not pay money when I could just handle it myself.

3. I look at any problem like this as an opportunity to try something new; a new computer-related experience to have under my belt. I could, as I say, just pay the monthly fee for more robust newsnet server access, but where would the fun be in that?

4. While having an NNTP proxy on my server box would take up HD space, of course, I'd much rather it be the server's HD space than my own primary computer's (which is already rather slim as it is, need to lay my hands on a new HD anyway), and News Rover would put the headers and articles on my HD, rather than my server box's. For the particular newsgroups I frequent, this would actually be quite important. Even so, last but not least...

5. My current news reader actually already has this capability, but don't use it based on reason 4.

Thanks all the same, Statica! ...Anyone else have an answer to my questions in the first post? ...If the NNTP Server function within IIS can do what I want it to do, how would I go about configuring that?