“At approximately 5pm PST today all BellSouth hosts were blocked due to inaction by their abuse department. We are currently working with BellSouth support to resolve this issue. Once BellSouth addresses our abuse complaints with them, we will remove the block on BellSouth hosts”, GameSurge admin Cradly announced on the networks’ website.

Major IRC networks are occasionally forced to GLine an entire ISP due to inactivity after abuse reports. This time however, it was a single user. “… it was an actual user who would persistently evade bans and G-lines” another GameSurge admin, Entrope, explained to IRC-Junkie.

Bellsouth is a dynamic ISP, making it hard to GLine a single user, as (s)he can simply reset his connection to gain a new IP.

After the network tried to contact Bellsouth to solve the problem and found no reply, they decided that a ban for the entire ISP was unavoidable. Entrope explains: “The ISP-wide G-line included a contact number for Bellsouth customers to call and let Bellsouth know that the lack of response was causing problems for them.  Once that happened, Bellsouth responded in an admirably quick time, and they have assured us that they will make appropriate efforts to resolve the problem.”

Within three hours after the GLine was put in place, Bellsouth replied and the GLine was removed. “Ideally, ISPs would respond to abuse reports without their users having to call in”, Entrope said.