"Grumman-581" wrote in message
...
[...] For example, when I'm
out of town and at a hotel, I am not able to connect to RoadRunner's news
servers, I have to use Google Groups instead... Since RR does not require
you to enter a user ID and password to connect to their news servers, I
believe that they do it this way to prevent people who are not RR
customers
from being able to use their system...

I have yet to run into such a situation in which an authenticating server
was not available as an alternative. The "no authentication" thing is as
much a convenience for the ISP (fewer things to explain to their users when
setting up) as anything else. And as I've mentioned, with the consolidation
of news services, fewer and fewer ISPs are even providing their own news
servers anyway.

Bottom line he until Jay's tried it and failed, there's no reason to
assume he won't be able to succeed.