Routing and Administration Committee

Want to link a server? Seen an admin misbehaving? Want to run interference on behalf of a friend who’s banned from Umbrellix? This is the place for you.

Routing Quick Hits

Link procedures

All administrators must be consulted in #admin-com about a new server link, except within jurisdictions decided by the Admin-Com. The owner of the IRC network must be consulted to add the domain names, however.

Hostname formats shall be ...umbrellix.net . There are no exceptions for servers that will be available to the IPv4 public (except as grandfathered: unclespam. is a services bot, and so is services.umbrellix.net . Additionally, Tor-only servers may replace .locale.country.umbrellix.net with .onion and use their onion as the hostname).

• A cluster is defined as a grouping of servers.
• A server, for the purpose of a link application is defined as a grouping of servers that are either in non-disparate physical locations, or is a clan of one.
• A server, for the purpose of “a grouping of servers,” is an instance of irca that is listening on an address suitable for the target audience.

• A target audience may be a company or project (Ronsor has this target audience - his server is allowed to be completely unreachable from the outside as long as it can connect to the designated hub), a regional public (in which case a server may have a limited I:line and may use a more severely restricted *@* I:line), a global public (in which case a server must have at least 10 Mbps of global bandwidth bidirectionally and must have a generally open *@* I:line), or a special public (like a darknet; your most general I:line must be open to the public you are serving)

• The testlink period for a server or a cluster lasts 28 days, but may be cancelled after 7, 14 or 21 in the case of demonstrated stability and good administrator behaviour and compliance with the charter of freedoms. (cluster graduates to full link early)

• At any time, a test-link may be cancelled for bad behaviour (harassing other opers, abuse to user-owned channels, unnecessary override usage)
• A server may have 0 netadmin-privilege O:lines for the duration of its testlink period. If an oper wishes to use override during test-link, they may, however they may not have netadmin privileges (which confer permanent override).
• The server’s administration immediately becomes Network Administration Committee delegates. Their membership will be suspended if they become no-opered from poor behaviour.
• If a server passes test-link while on behavioural probation, it remains on behavioural probation and may not have any opers whatsoever (No-Op by OperServ).
• Servers passing test-link on behavioural probation will be L:lined for all hosts and will be H:lined only in their locale.
• Servers passing test-link with satisfactory behaviour will be H:lined for the locales nearest them and L:lined for hosts outside of their region that they do not expect to hub for. Hubs are exempt, however, care must be taken to prevent NA->EU->NA tracks, or, for an actually very annoying example that happened once when we had Claritas linked to us:
  • Server in Illinois (claritas.il.us.*) is on behavioural probation and is in its testlink phase. Due to the NACD’s personality disorder, which earned him a suspension from the RNAC, it is expected that the server will not leave behavioural probation.
  • Server in Georgia (ronsor*.onion.ga.us.*) passed its test-link. It’s a permanent fixture on the network. Its closest theoretical hub is in Illinois, and it’s equidistant with the Illinois server from the North Pacific Rim hub (invictus.wa.us.*), but due to the Illinois server’s behavioural probation, it connects into the rest of the network via invictus.wa.us.*, rather than via claritas.il.us.*. Additionally, r*.onion.ga.us.* is a leaf, due to the inability of the first among equals to add link blocks to the server in a timely manner (administrator is absentee and FAE has not received shell credentials).
  • Server in Roubaix (emmanuelmacron.rbx.fr.*) passed its test-link. It is in a leaf position in the network, being the only server east of the Atlantic. Both claritas.il.us.* and r*.onion.ga.us.* are leaves, due to operator misbehaviour and neglect, respectively.
  • As a result, the client server in Washington state, invictus.wa.us.*, is hub for all points east of itself.
  • This network is not configured optimally. By donating a server on the Eastern seaboard (and you don’t need to run a client server if you don’t want to - it can be just a hidden hub (would have the IRC-hostname “...<sponsor’s org name>.x” - “.x” signifies hubs and is an invalid TLD)) you can solve this problem if it still exists today.
• A global-public server that finishes its test link without probation will be added to the round robin, irc.umbrellix.net. Only two servers have successfully finished test linking that are available to the global IPv4 public. Only one server exists that is available to the global IPv6 public.
• We don’t need your help, but we would like it.
• A server that is declared a leaf is allowed to hub - the admin must, however, ask for the appropriate H:lines to be added ahead of time, unless they have registered an organisation name (which they should). They will always get *..umbrellix.net hubbed to them.
• Servers that should be hub should be H:lined “*”, or use “unclespam.”, “*.umbrellix.net”, “*.h”, “*.x”, “*.l”, “*.d”, “*.c”, and “*.s” to prevent non-pattern-fitting servers from linking in. Failure to do one of the above options will result in netsplits.
• The kinds of servers you expect you will have behind you must be reported on to the routing mailing list (which will be disclosed to you upon your successful application) every year on the 26th of December, and every time you expect that you will have new kinds of servers behind you. Authorisations for kinds of servers do not expire.

Meanings of invalid TLDs

Organisation names

Organisation names are the second level component of a hidden hub or leaf’s IRC hostname. Usually, it will be the organisation’s registered domain, with all dots changed for dashes.

If an IRC.tl admin were to link a Janus or Pylink here, first they’d be told to turn tail, because this network supports Unicode nicknames and theirs won’t, and Pylink strips UTF in nicks anyway, and if they weren’t immediately told to turn tail, their organisation name would be “irc-tl.”

Public and regional public hubs and leaves will always have hostnames ending in *.umbrellix.net.

Routing/Network Administration Committee Members