Why do we still use IDENTD?

Wakko Warner asks: "So anyway, I was on IRC the other day (as I am often wont to do), and, as I was being banned from the network for not running 'identd', I thought to myself: 'Why do we still use this???' Can anyone come up with a valid reason why, in 2002, ident is still considered by some people to be a necessary component of the Internet? Most people use Windows for everything, and Windows has no identity services. Most UNIX folks I know disable it for security reasons. So, why do people still insist we run it in order to connect to their network? Is it still 1993 in some part of the world?"

Comments

Re:Plenty of identd servers for Win32

[Anonymous Coward]

And every self-respecting irc-client has one built-in. That's not the point. The question is: Why do we want users to have identd running when the majority of users is in full control of the client machine anyway? Identd only makes sense in scenarios with multiple users per client ip and identd can't be manipulated by the users.

Re:IRC Servers do have a use

[Wakko Warner]

What if I run this identd server, which appears to give perfectly valid ident responses (though they're completely random strings of gibberish)? There are others in the FreeBSD ports collection and in Debian's dpkg list (and, I'm sure, elsewhere) that allow me to do the same.

If I run mIRC, it's even easier to change my ident response. I don't even need to compile or install anything, let alone enable it in /etc/inetd.conf.

- A.P.