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Oldest IRC Server Going Offline
Matty_ writes: "Looks like the oldest IRC server in continued operation on the Internet is going to be turned off for good. According to the server's MOTD, the server will be shut off no later than January 1. Aparently the University of Colorado can no longer support the software and hardware, as well as provide the network resources, specifically the extra bandwidth required for the various DoS (Denial of Service) attacks from which EFnet servers still suffer. They chose not to accept the liability and decided to retire the server."
Four years ago, Jarkko Oikarinen wrote a history of EFnet. In late '9, irc.colorado.edu reached 1000 users. Interesting read for anyone interested in how EFNet became what it is today.
What do you think of MusicCity now?
Some peoples comments here have been a little misinformed/out-of-date but, I'll spout some knowledge for your enjoyment.
Chanfix, a sort of ChanServ, has been put into operation on EFnet. Making packeting for channels relatively pointless. As of late, I've noticed less DoS, but I may just not be feeling it.
There is no, and probably never will be, any variation of NickServ. The "nicks/channels aren't owned" philosophy that EFnet was famous for is dying out. But, I don't think it will ever die out so much as to put in some type of NickServ solution.
As for EFnet politics, they're still there. But some progress has been made. The efnet.org website is the most official, functional website the network has ever had. There's been attempts to put comittees together for various area's, such as CoderCom. The voting site is functional and got some use where I had access to it, I don't know about it now.
But there still is work to be done. I personally haven't seen much in the way of enforcement of most things that were "voted" on by the admins. But this could be my not-in-the-know fault. All in all, EFnet and IRC in general is surviving. EFnet has remained at a stable, if not very slightly growing, lower to mid 70k users. Other networks have grown to surpass us, last I checked DALnet had over 100k users and they're doing quite well.
IRC is far from dead. All servers delink eventually, it's just the way of things. But the network is still the same stuborn machine it's always been and will continue to be.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Efnet as well as Dalnet and a few other major IRC networks are bombarded by script kiddies on a daily basis, dalnet almost shut down like last year because of it. a bunch of morons with stolen cisco routers were flooding them with dos attacks. which made chatting on the network about as fun as sending one line e-mails at a time. the problem isnt the servers its the morons who are against them. IRC is a free service and if people dont start to respect it, its eather going to slowly leave or start charging. I dont know about you all but i use it regularly and i would personally like to give these 12 year old h4X0rs a peice of my mind. or perhaps a visit from the fbi might help change thier ways eh? well iam not wasting my time tracing a bunch of wanna-bes but something certainly needs to be done.. perhaps a new irc protocall wouldnt be a bad idea.. following the example of ssh perhaps, making it secure and allowing the servers hosting irc to reject all the DoS crap they get daily.
just a thought
VAX
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On the PtP issue: do what other groups have done: Bandwidth limit the PtP prototcols. This way they're not censoring it, and bandwidth is preserved. Many even open up the pipes during otherwise low-traffic hours.
I remember when blackened.org went offline because of DoS attacks. They had the ability to serve up to 7000 IRC clients. One of the main reasons for killing the server, IIRC, was because of an evening where a bunch of idiots threw tons of garbage down blackened's pipes, causing the entire state of (arizona?) to be deprived of internet access. Although I cannot find Matt's original letter, I did find the config of irc2.blackened.com:
oldcharred.blackened.com: AMD K6-2 @ 333mhz, 128M of ram, 18G-10k rpm scsi primary, 9G secondary. This server houses the origional irc2.blackened.com EFnet server, the largest EFnet server in the world before it de-linked. Still running with the origional IRCD, I, O, C/N lines and TCM.
It's a pity that, in blackened's case, volunteer workers such as mjr are forced to abandon what they love to do, because of immature kiddies flooding the network with useless garbage.
This is the one of three remaining .edu servers. US EFnet at one point in time was made up over 50% edu's.
l
.edu makes up about 50% :) IRC got it's start with colleges, that is a fading trend however as major ISPs are mostly the ones holding the torches. This does seem to parallel the Internet itself though, doesn't it? Starting with educational institutions and then being supported by commercial endeavours.
A list of dead EFnet servers can be viewed at http://outcaste.shits.in.the.pigpond.com/dead.htm
Notice that
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Those of us sick of the crap simply start running our own servers. I used EFNet to hang out on a single channel. When everything started going to shit, and since I had cablemodem access (now DSL), I simply put up my own small server, and notified everyone where the channel's new home would be. Problem solved.
I really do miss the early days of IRC though. Before the 'net became flooded by the damned AOL kiddies. #flirt and #ircbar on EFNet were a riot. Oh well. We've lost this culture just as we've lost ascii art, since email clients all have HTML now. Usenet will be next, I fear. You even have people in the mozilla group posting shit with HTML. *sigh*
How many "clients" on EFNet are bots and how many are actual users.
I'd put money on the fact that the actual user count has gone way down since inception, EFNet is about 75% eggdrop bots holding channels or nick holders.
And 25% of those are probably Mark's bots.
Quantity never equalled quality. While EFNet may never die, Opers on EFNet need to wake up to some cold hard facts:
1) Channels have owners.
2) Nicks have owners.
When Opers maintain a policy of not getting involved in such disputes, parties involved will go to war to maintain control, turning EFNet servers into a battle ground.
Finally, as the servers start dying out and the leftist liberals running them can no longer maintain the anarchy of script kiddies, warez and kiddie porn, the only way to save the network is to run services that keep order.
Electrawn
Electrawn
I thought the oldest IRC server, in pedantic sense, was tolsun.oulu.fi, a SUN box that now sits in University of Oulu computer museum...
...and mind you, that machine was not taken down because of network abuse - there were two reasons for its ruination, actually: 1) it could easily be replaced with a 386 running Linux to increase its general performance, and 2) some idiot lost the power source wiring diagram when they took it down for maintenance one day.
EFnet is the first "separate" IRC network, yes, but the old IRCNet is still up and running, and is one of the most popular mostly-European networks. (Some say that's infortunate...)
(Well, at least irc.oulu.fi works just fine for me =)
I've been running an IRC-server for almost a decade and a lot has changed during that time. the number of users has exploded, and the severity of abuse has skyrocketed. many years ago most types of common abuse would only affect other IRC users. security/system administration staff would usually adopt a "this is an IRC-related problem and we don't care what goes on on IRC" attitude, which was fine back then. Annoying to IRC users, but still fair enough.
in the last 5-6 years the attacks have become a lot more serious. even ignorant people can launch attacks that effectively render the network unusable for hundreds of thousands of users; if not millions, and they do not even need to understand what they are doing -- on a technical level or otherwise.
however the willingness and ability to address the problem has not really improved that much. most ISPs don't care about being a good neighbor and I have even experienced cases where ISPs would look the other way because an abuser was a personal friend or coworker of people in the abuse-department of that ISP.
the attitude of many ISPs has contributed to legitimizing denial of service attacks to some degree by not taking any responsibility for keeping their back yard clean.
ironically enough this attitude will just end up hurting the ISPs themselves, since the erosion of boundaries between what is acceptable and what is not ultimately ends up costing them wasted bandwith, time and effort.
also, as someone else mentioned: IRC admins are not totally free of blame. most of the good ones don't really have enough time to deal with all the bullshit -- and as for the not so good admins and opers: well, what do you expect when most of them are in it just to have a sense of power?
finding good admins is hard. I've been trying to pass along the baton for some years now so I could quit maintaining the IRC server, but whenever I try to recruit opers and prospective future admins I either end up with good people who can't spare the time or I end up with a bunch of people who are just after that sense of "power".
IRC as such stopped being fun many years ago. The biggest tragedy is that although we probably should just stop offering the services altogether in order to put a stop to the waste of resources, we aren't. even though the usefulness of IRC has been diminished there will always be those who will keep it alive in some shape or form which means that to the feeble of mind the service will never "die" and thus they conclude that it is okay to keep doing whatever they do to wreck it.