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IRC:  Why we don't have or allow it on halcyon.com


Q.  I understand that you do not permit ANY use of IRC.  True?

A.  We don't permit the execution or compilation of IRC clients, servers,
    or code on the halcyon-family systems (coho, chinook, halcyon).  If
    you have a Personal SLIP or Personal PPP account, you can run your own
    IRC client on your own Mac, PC, or other local machine.   Alter-
    natively, you can telnet to someone else's machine and use their IRC
    client.


Q.  Is there a technical reason for this prohibition, or are you folks
    just crabby and uncooperative?

A.  Irc is a security nightmare, a conduit for stolen software, an
    administrative pain-in-all-parts, and a resource hog.  We made a
    decision in favor of the majority of our users and our own sleep and
    sanity.


A little more detail:

IRC uses too many resources relative to the number of users, and presents
security holes.  Most large system adminstrators have, at one time or
another, reached this same conclusion and elminated it from their systems.

Aside from what's available by typing:

     help policy irc

...at the shell prompt, here's the party line:

halcyon was one of a few public sites having an IRC server online, about
two years ago.  There were numerous problems with the software and so on
that the authors were unwilling to address.  So we decided to bag the
server idea and run a public IRC client, so that all of our users could
enjoy it.  We had nothing but problems.

First, users of IRC violated the terms and conditions of our sites, plus
the Acceptable Use Policies of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and
other backbone providers.  Some violations included the use of bots which
bombed other sites, forcing them offline; forging email from root and
other users; passing commercial and copyrighted software through IRC; and
on and on in that vein.

Our staff members and users were threatened with death and/or injury to
themselves and their family, as well as destruction of their personal
property by some of the less temperate IRC users.

Our systems were constantly being rendered useless by inconsiderate use
of resources, including extensive use of disk space, heavy CPU util-
ization, and monopolizing modems.  Our systems often crashed from problems
directly attributable to IRC users.  Over 40 hours per week were being
spent by our staff to repair damage and answer e-mail and phone calls
about these problems.

As IRC users represented only a small percentage of our users and inter-
fered with the serious personal and commercial users of our systems, it
soon became apparent that there was little or no upside to providing IRC
facilities.  We decided to remove all access to IRC on our systems.  No
IRC clients may be executed on halcyon, coho, chinook, or any other
Northwest Nexus machine.  No 'tsunami'-type client may be used to access
the IRC ports on other hosts.  Use of an IRC client or similar application
will result in a user losing access to our systems without notice.  Access
to IRC is permitted only by your using telnet to connect to another host
that allows such access, or by using an IRC client that runs on your PC or
Mac over a SLIP or PPP account.


(24-May-95/ircwwdho/MJT)
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Copyright 1996  Northwest Nexus Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
This document may not be reproduced nor redistributed in any form without
express permission; contact us at support@halcyon.com with questions.