When our service opened 6 months ago, I made it a point to open up availability to many networks that were blacklisted, with a few notable exceptions (DALnet because of DDoS issues, any network whose primary purpose is file sharing, hacking, etc.). Networks such as SwiftIRC, AlphaChat, Byroe, BhasIRC and others got a new lease on availability. Though 1 or 2 have already been put on our permanent blacklist (BhasIRC and DesireNET the principle networks), things have worked out for the most part. One network I continued not to allow was AllNetwork, purely because of the amount of abuse I had seen from users to that network over the prior year and a half. Now that our service has established itself and I have put numerous checking systems into the bot, I have decided to allow AllNetwork on a limited basis for now. This “limited” basis will be 1 account per IP allowed to their servers. When these fill up and if there are no incidents for a week, I will open up another account per IP until I am confident that abuse will be very minimum and then I will allow the full limit per IP to the network. I want to give these users a chance. I hope this works out for everyone.
As many of you know already, Rho has moved since the last news post. In addition to it being on a far better server and much more reliable host, we were also able to add 2 more IPv4 IP’s to help us out. The new server is in the UK, giving us a server based in that region again after the original Xi left.
Our new *buffextras module is finished and installed across all servers. This new version offers our users the ability to set it on an individual channel basis… a first anywhere for this module. Though not many users will bother to use this feature, those that do will appreciate the benefits. The new *network module is being finished now, though the webadmin interface for it has yet to be started, and frankly will be the most difficult part according to Armageddon. But, I know she will succeed and give our users the ability to finally change their server list to another server for the same network without the need of the Elite staff. This will be especially helpful to our users with accounts to EFnet, IRCnet, Link-Net, and many others.
The new EliteCrawler script in the bot, designed to get information from new networks not in our database, has been completed and is now in full use. It is now a 2-step process for us to add new networks into our system. I have set all new networks to a default of 2 accounts per IP unless the bot gathers information from the network itself that shows it is higher or lower. It is rare that many of these networks even fill up 1 account across all of our IP’s, so this was a logical quick solution even though many nets allow 3 or more per IP. This has sped up adding requests to unknown networks to as little as 4 or 5 minutes, with confidence that accounts added are not going to be immediately banned. It’s part of my continued effort to make our service the Elite of the free bouncer industry.
There is more to come in the coming weeks, so please check back!