Preserving Australia's Digital Heritage (Moving #EEVBlog to irc.austnet.org)

[Halcyon]

Supporters,

I've wanted to float this idea for a little while and have already spoken to Dave briefly and some of the other IRC users about it. I'd like to now see what the greater EEVBlog public think.

Background
This month (November 2018) it was announced that irc.oz.org was shutting down its services and redirecting its DNS to irc.austnet.org.

oz.org was one of Australia's largest and oldest IRC networks. The oz.org servers were originally part of Undernet, but in March 1996 the servers were delinked because of capacity and reliability issues on the TransPacific AU to US internet link and oz.org was conceived as a trial. By early 2000's oz.org had thousands of users but with IRC dying a slow death, this had dwindled to several 10's of users today.

Like oz.org, AustNet was launched in 1996 and now hosts servers in Sydney, Perth, Melbourne and Adelaide (AU), Oregon (US) and Busan (South Korea). Austnet is administered mostly by Aussies (with the exception of a few from the US).

Proposal
With AustNet being the last major IRC server in Australia, I'd like to see that piece of the internet preserved and maintained for as long as possible. Ultimately, IRC survives because of its users. Without users it might as well not exist.

I'm proposing to have Dave's / EEVBlog's unofficial "official" IRC channel moved from where it's currently hosted on Afternet to Austnet, either simply pointing the website / web client to irc.austnet.org or having EEVBlog's own server set up and linked to the Austnet network.

The former would be the quickest and involve the least amount of effort. The latter would ensure that if anything ever happened to Austnet, irc.eevblog.com (for example) would continue to operate independently for a long as Dave and his admins want.

I've been speaking with some of the guys from Austnet including their root network administrator, lead developer and some other members of their services team and they are very much of the same mindset to me -- They want to see the longevity of IRC in Australia (and the world) be preserved for as long as possible. I've been told the guys over at Austnet are happy to bend over backwards to make everyone feel wanted and welcomed.

Personally, IRC has been part of my life for over 19 years and have made some very close friends because of it.

To answer any foreseeable questions some people might have...

What's IRC?
Internet Relay Chat. It's a text-based chat protocol that's still quite popular among nerds, geeks and those of us who are still living in the 1990's.

What about the web chat functionality on https://www.eevblog.com/chat
That would remain as-is and would connect to the new server.

What about the current configuration of the existing IRC channel?
The proposal would involve moving the existing channel from Afternet over to Austnet "as is". All that would mean is that all users would be connecting to a different server. The same operators and moderators would still be there.

Who would control the #EEVBlog channel on Austnet?
Currently, the channel has been temporarily registered to secure the name while the cut-over from oz.org to Austnet happens. Channel ownership would ultimately be transferred to Dave as it's his brand and company.

How would it impact existing users of the IRC channel?
The change would have little impact if any at all. All users need to do is connect to a different network. They can also elect to "register" their nicknames so they cannot be used by another user.

What's wrong with Afternet?
Nothing's wrong with it, this is about preserving Australia's IRC heritage (since Dave and the EEVBlog is fundamentally Aussie). However Austnet's services are more modern and offer many more features and options compared to Afternet's channel and nick services.

[EEVblog]

I support this.
Happy to connect the webpage to the new server

[T3sl4co1l]

I don't mind.  About the only excuse I have is inertia and missing a few people who might/probably not follow.

Tim

[Urs42]

The Internet connection between europe and australia is really bad. afternet has servers around the world, austnet doesn't...

Ping times to the next afternet server are 32ms for me, and about 300-400ms to australia, no packet loss at the moment, but a coworker had massive problems with accessing servers here in switzerland while he was in australia.

[Halcyon]

The Internet connection between europe and australia is really bad. afternet has servers around the world, austnet doesn't...

Ping times to the next afternet server are 32ms for me, and about 300-400ms to australia, no packet loss at the moment, but a coworker had massive problems with accessing servers here in switzerland while he was in australia.

Austnet also has servers in the US and South Korea, not just Australia. Provided you have a decent connection to one of those countries, you'll be fine.

Keep in mind, we're talking about text. IRC was perfectly fine over 28.8k and slower modems and the protocol hasn't really changed much since. You could have latency of several seconds and it still wouldn't cause problems for IRC. Just loading this forum uses orders of magnitude more bandwidth and data than an IRC session does.

EDIT: In addition it appears that whilst Austnet currently maintains 6 active servers, Afternet only has 3.

[Urs42]

Austnet also has servers in the US and South Korea, not just Australia. Provided you have a decent connection to one of those countries, you'll be fine.

I do not have any access to systems in Souh Korea, we do have Servers in Singapore, working on them over SSH is horrible, and there are several warnings in our monitoring because of packet loss each  week. Yes, SSH is something different than IRC and latency is a much bigger issue with SSH.

Keep in mind, we're talking about text. IRC was perfectly fine over 28.8k and slower modems and the protocol hasn't really changed much since. You could have latency of several seconds and it still wouldn't cause problems for IRC. Just loading this forum uses orders of magnitude more bandwidth and data than an IRC session does.

I do run my own small IRC Network with 3 Servers for a group of people here in Switzerland, i know how much bandwidth it uses. The Problem i see is that you have a lot of Users in the eevblog chanel and it is possible that the channel is "flooded" with ping timeout quit messages.

[Halcyon]

Austnet also has servers in the US and South Korea, not just Australia. Provided you have a decent connection to one of those countries, you'll be fine.

I do not have any access to systems in Souh Korea, we do have Servers in Singapore, working on them over SSH is horrible, and there are several warnings in our monitoring because of packet loss each  week. Yes, SSH is something different than IRC and latency is a much bigger issue with SSH.

Keep in mind, we're talking about text. IRC was perfectly fine over 28.8k and slower modems and the protocol hasn't really changed much since. You could have latency of several seconds and it still wouldn't cause problems for IRC. Just loading this forum uses orders of magnitude more bandwidth and data than an IRC session does.

I do run my own small IRC Network with 3 Servers for a group of people here in Switzerland, i know how much bandwidth it uses. The Problem i see is that you have a lot of Users in the eevblog chanel and it is possible that the channel is "flooded" with ping timeout quit messages.

I appreciate your comments, however I've been assured that this isn't going to be an issue. Austnet supported thousands of users "back in the day" and even now, a single server and link will easily support 500+ users without missing a beat. I think you could easily double that number before you even start noticing any increase in latency (which isn't really that important for IRC).

In fact, Austnet is in a BETTER position for reliability than Afternet given that they have double the number of servers.

All I can suggest is you try it out for yourself. The server address is irc.austnet.org and #EEVBlog is the channel. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

[David Hess]

4. EEVBlog has an IRC channel?

[Halcyon]

4. EEVBlog has an IRC channel?

Indeed! It's actually quite popular and usually active.

[EEVblog]

New web based server is up on https://www.eevblog.com/chat/

I got this error when logging out and back in again, guess it doesn't like me doing that too quickly.
" [Z-Lined: Do not load floodbots on Austnet.])"

[Halcyon]

New web based server is up on https://www.eevblog.com/chat/

I got this error when logging out and back in again, guess it doesn't like me doing that too quickly.
" [Z-Lined: Do not load floodbots on Austnet.])"

Yes, if you connect multiple times from one IP, it zaps all your connections off the server. ;-) It's to prevent people from mass-joining. (You were still connected as Dave at that point.)

One small detail though, the text above the chat box still has the old info.

[alm]

If multiple people are using the web client at the same time, then wouldn't that show up as multiple connections from the same IP: the outbound IP of the server that acts as the HTTP to IRC gateway? I just tried to connect via the web client, and got the same error, even though I didn't have any previous connections to AustNet.

[cepwin]

Seems like a win-win...preserve the heritage *and* have more features.

[Halcyon]

Thanks to everyone for their support and thank you Dave!

The EEVBlog chat has launched on AustNet! To join, you can either use the web chat functionality on the EEVBlog homepage at: https://www.eevblog.com/chat
or by using an IRC client such as mIRC (Windows) or HexChat (Cross-platform).

If using an IRC client, connect to irc.austnet.org on ports 6667-6669 or port 6697 for SSL connections and join the #EEVBlog channel.

You'll find an number of users from the forum and those with electronics and computing backgrounds from all over the world.
If you wish to secure your nickname on the server, type /msg NickOP help register for more information.

Maybe down the track Dave or David can find an hour or so a few times a year to join us for some Q&A sessions ;-)

[mrpackethead]

Thanks to everyone for their support and thank you Dave!

The EEVBlog chat has launched on AustNet! To join, you can either use the web chat functionality on the EEVBlog homepage at: https://www.eevblog.com/chat
or by using an IRC client such as mIRC (Windows) or HexChat (Cross-platform).

If using an IRC client, connect to irc.austnet.org on ports 6667-6669 or port 6697 for SSL connections and join the #EEVBlog channel.

You'll find an number of users from the forum and those with electronics and computing backgrounds from all over the world.
If you wish to secure your nickname on the server, type /msg NickOP help register for more information.

Maybe down the track Dave or David can find an hour or so a few times a year to join us for some Q&A sessions ;-)

Why change this.. to a virtualy unknown irc network, if anyting should have gone to freenode..  the 100+ people in afternet certanily dont' know anything.

[Halcyon]

Why change this.. to a virtualy unknown irc network, if anyting should have gone to freenode..  the 100+ people in afternet certanily dont' know anything.

You entirely missed the point of this. Austnet isn't "virtually unknown", it's one of the most popular and oldest IRC networks in the country. Many of us grew up on it (and others) back in the day.

To be fair, of the 100 users on the "old" channel, only 10-15 regulars are actually active and you can chat to them over on Austnet as well.

Moving over to Austnet will have literally no impact on users who just want to join and chat. It operates exactly the same way, in fact, we've picked up additional supporters in the channel since doing so, people who have watched Dave for years but never joined us on Afternet.

[Ampera]

Suggestion to all using the IRC channel:

If you intend to stick around, use an IRC client like HexChat, because staying on KiwiIRC floods the chat with leave/join messages, and really isn't intended as a permanent client (not without a ZNC).

[Halcyon]

Suggestion to all using the IRC channel:

If you intend to stick around, use an IRC client like HexChat, because staying on KiwiIRC floods the chat with leave/join messages, and really isn't intended as a permanent client (not without a ZNC).

+1 definitely use a client running on your machine. The Kiwi IRC web client, whilst it does the job, isn't the greatest. I've noticed a few issues with it regardless of what server it's connecting to.

[arekm]

Admins of that network need to fix their SSL/TLS certificates :

"Irssi: warning Could not verify TLS servers certificate: self signed certificate"

otherwise SSL/TLS is a joke there. Reported to them via contact form.

[Halcyon]

Admins of that network need to fix their SSL/TLS certificates :

"Irssi: warning Could not verify TLS servers certificate: self signed certificate"

otherwise SSL/TLS is a joke there. Reported to them via contact form.

They are aware of it and it is being worked on. It should be rectified very soon, in the meantime just use non-SSL ports.