From emf@aol.net Thu Nov 5 14:59:58 1998 Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 21:14:00 -0700 (MST) From: emf@aol.net To: routing@the-project.org Cc: ircadmin@aol.net, emf@aol.net Subject: The future of the AOL efnet server. Resent-Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 13:35:57 -0700 (MST) Resent-From: Matthew Ramsey Resent-To: routing@the-project.org Resent-Subject: The future of the AOL efnet server. Greetings. I see there's been some heavy discussion yet again, along with a list of demands from the EFnet routing group as to what should be done with irc02.irc.aol.com, and when it should be done by. Frankly, I don't feel that we need to wait until Nov 13th to make a decision on the matter, and it's highly likely that I speak for all the others behind ircadmin@aol.net when I say this (although, they're more than capable of speaking up for themselves if this isn't the case) As to the demands made by steve@exodus.net: a) "no response on may(sic) abuse issues when directly sent to them" Yep. you're right. We're not here to do that. We never agreed to babysitting the servers when they got dumped on us, and it is currently a technical impossiblilty to have effective abuse resolution in the domain of the irc server alone. [There is a technical solution, enforcing a proper "ident" that can be klined, which we're discussing with our legal department, since it clearly violates the AOL Privacy Policy. Its unlikely we'll be allowed to implement the technical fix.] if there are severe abuse issues, i'm sure the AOL Terms Of Service (TOS/CAT) team would be more than happy to talk to you about it. Their phone number is available to any member of the service, and i'm sure we've still got those 50 free hour floppies lying around if you can't get in touch with them any other way.. Non-employee opers are a band-aid, and will definately go away one way or another real soon. We're still mulling over ways to limit the damage any aol member can do to any other member while on IRC (wether we're linked to EFnet or not. that's a moot issue.) This would of course include non-members using our servers or other servers. b) obvious lack of a clue when dealing with security issues. perhaps. the current system is severely out of date and vulnerable. Its going away as soon as someone gives us C/N's for irc-i01.irc.aol.com and we switch all the users over to it instead. That system is has a much saner config, current patches, and a smarter set of filters in front of it. (yes, it has no_oper_on_split..) c) no opers online most of the time not going to change. We're more than happy to build a system that's solid enough to be on autopilot, but that's where we're drawing the line. irc-i01.irc.aol.com will be that system. d) admins who refuse to fix the obvious problems with their server to a point, this is also valid. we're not bothering to fix irc02.irc.aol.com. it's obsolete. it needs to be turned off post-haste. we built irc-i01.irc.aol.com to replace it, and fixed things that way. If not for the nonsense a week or so back, this server might be up now rendering your argument inconsequential. e) abuse is not dealt with (no opers == abusive users have free reign) Life sucks. Buy a helmet. Fighting abuse on our server as it stands now with no ident is like pissing on a forest fire. even temporary klines last about 35 seconds till they redial and come through a different part of the IPT. I've got better things to do than emulate /ignore for you. We'd like to fix this. see above if you missed it. I dont like the abuse any more than you do, but with the combination of our corporate policies and EFnet's policies, there's nothing we can do about it. So, where does that leave us? Well, if I read the rules of EFnet right, we're going to get delinked. Bummer. On the other hand, if we're accidentally not delinked, we do have a small handful of useful things to offer the EFnet community, should they want it. okay, so it's only three things we can offer. 1) a system to soak up the load of all the AOL irc users and to contain them in a nice neat place. 2) a system to host external users with our rediculious amounts of bandwidth. 3) a system to do hub routing (likely with no direct client connections) which also donates our rediculious amounts of bandwidth to the EFnet community. And thats about it. Should we be delinked, I'm pretty sure the Undernet hub we run wont mind a little more cpu power. But make your decision and get it over with. Please. We're tired of all the bickering. .emf. -- Erik Fichtner Unix Systems Administrator, Internet Operations, America OnLine. "The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents." --Nathaniel Borenstein ------------------ [ American EFnet Routing List ] ---------------------- To unsub: routing-request@the-project.org with unsubscribe in the subject List Maintainer: Matthew Ramsey Web Archives: http://www.the-project.org/routing/current -------------------------------------------------------------------------