RE: [Unity-irc3] Realistic review of drafts; revival of list

[David Westley]

Still alive and still interested...just been a bit busy with work! :/

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* Separation of one-to-one and one-to-many (channels)
  - by moving the responsibility for managing channels to different servers,
    we get rid of the question of domains and politics. Since most of a
    network's politics are about channels, this would be really useful.
    People could just choose where they get their account from and then
    where they get their channel from. Again, this design would require most
    of the servers to require account registrations. Of course, traditional
    IRCNet-style non-owned nicks and channels are possible as well. But
    who'd want that. ;)

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Most networks politics is about content and users not how channels are
run...that's a channel operators deal, also isn't nick/channel registration
a network politics area??

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  - we'd have the usual network of servers which clients can connect to. But
    in order to join a channel, they'd have to establish another connection
    to the server that runs a channel. They can then exchange all
information
    via that server - including state information and stuff. No impact on
the
    network any longer - everything would remain on the channel server.

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This would need a client change would it not? Can you be sure that the
client coders would be willing to change their programs to support this, and
if so would it be possible for them to support both protocols with a single
codebase?

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  - another beauty: everyone could run their own channel server for
temporary
    channels without having to register one.

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Am I right in thinking that if you wanted people to connect to a channel
you've made on your own little channel server they'd need to connect to your
IP/hostname to be able to talk on that channel, there by making old local
channels available but NOT part of the general server software?

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  - channel politics are decided one by the channel server - it's the
absolute
    authority of the channels it manages.

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See 1st comment

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* Less network, more server
  - that's quite the opposite of what we thought about before. Server have
    their own domain each, registrations are only local as well.
    On a server called server1.quackweb.org, a user can register an account
    called address@hidden
    On a channel server called cs.quackweb.org, a user can register a
channel
    called address@hidden (FIXME: do we still want '#'? looks
ugly).

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Could you expand on this a bit more as I'm not sure I understand this fully.
(Yeah I know I'm supposed to be one of the brainer ones but sometimes ideas
need to be explained a fair bit before people understand them :P)

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  - network-wide bans are no longer possible. I suggest a central blacklist
    that considers a user blacklisted if a certain percentage of all known
    servers have added a complaint about the user. To be decided on.
    This mechanism might also be used for badly behaving servers.
    Channel servers, however, don't need to be banned since they are
passive.
    Well, mostly. Of course they have to validate the identity of users
    connecting to them and stuff.

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I can hear the cries of IRC Operators..."I can't ban this fucker from the
network anymore!!!!!" Also how exactly would these channel servers validate
the identity of the users connecting to them without connecting to a client
server and requesting information from it, and if that is what it does then
how do you get around corrupt channel server operator or maybe a comprimised
channel server?

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  - channel server operators, however, have some more power. Anyway, since
    channel servers don't require any kind of IRC services, everyone should
    have the same rights for a full-featured channel, so the operators don't
    really have an advantage. Of course, they can badchan, unregister/close
    channels and stuff. They could even take control on a channel they don't
    own. But then again, nobody would use a channel server with corrupted
    opers, would they? ;)

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How would you stop someone from stealing your channel when you no one is
around if there are no services?

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  - here's an idea about the network mechanism. To keep the routing
algorithm
    simple (read: avoid writing one at all), how about directly connecting
to
    remote servers? We could reserve a couple of FDs to connecting to other
    servers, then keeping connections open after sending something to
another
    server. When we get an overflow, throw out the less-used connection and
    connect to the new server instead.
    Obvious advantages: no routing algorithm needed (i.e. routing mechanisms
    of The Internet are used), should still be pretty fast.
  - now it's scalable like hell. Everything can be torn apart without any
    problems. Just add a server here and another one there and we have
    sufficient capacity again.

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This could do with more explaination too.

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* Obvious changes
  - no network-wide index of people online. It's no problem to list other
    users within the same domain, but it's just impossible to do that for
    the entire network. What do we do?
    We add some kind of directory server.
    We add an ICQ-style notify list.
    We could even add a regional index of people that's updated
automatically,
       i.e. a Really Useful directory of people that live in the same region
       as the one who asks for info. This would require one directory server
       per region, obviously.
    Note that directories are some kind of luxury. People can spread their
    personal chat address (why not URL style?
    greatchat://server.domain.org:port/username - or e-mail style?
    address@hidden:port) in whatever way they want.
    Let the WWW be our directory. Saves us a lot of trouble. ;)
  - same for index of channels. Every channel server could supply a detailed
    description of the channels registered with it, however. Their choice,
    not ours.

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I really like the idea of a regional index of users online however it would
need to take its info from some registration details (assuming people don't
lie) or use the information from an IP block lookup but again that can be
faked by people using a bouncer. Granted that with IPv6 it would be
impossible (I think) to spoof/fake your OWN IP but you've still got n+1
users on bouncers.
Alot of this stuff still needs alot more explaination.




I know it looks like I've pulled this apart but it's what you asked to be
done, also this way other people might better understand it :)


David Westley