Awesome thanks.. glad to be here.

Seiki, could you introduce yourself and your role on Undernet.

Shure, my name is douglas.. I'm 27 and live in Pennsylvania USA. I'm a server operator for the AT&T worldnet IRC server here on undernet.
You can check our how our server ranks to other servers on our website. http://irc1.worldnet.att.net/usage/

And what are the main functions of an operator ?

Well, basically we have one job.. keep the IRC server connected to a hub.

A hub ? you mean a physical network device ?

hehe, irc servers are either leafs or hubs. Leafs accept user connections. Hubs join these leafs. Which forms the irc network.

Ahh, and your server is a hub or a leaf ?

My server is a leaf server.

Does that also mean you have to deal with users a lot?

Well, yes and no.. Technically my only duty for undernet is keep my server running. It would be perfectly ok for me to hide away in some +s channel with a seiki```` nick so nobody could find me.
AT&T however runs a public irc channel here on undernet called #IRC_HELP. AT&T requires that I, as one of their operators assist AT&T on undernet, and their worldnet users.

What are possible errors that could occur, and what measures do you have to correct them?

Well, as far as errors.. Without going too deeply into how the internet works. All the hubs and servers on undernet are on different backbones.. Some servers have sprint lines... others have concentric.. Mine obviously has att.net.
There are sometimes issues between these backbone providers which affects us. Part of my job is to recognize these problems and deal with it accordingly.
Example. .sprint datacenter in newyork get 'smurf attacked' Undernet has a hub server there that would be affected. We would have to route our users and leaf servers around it.

About attacks, currently there is a major situation on EFnet. How do you feel about this, and could undernet be affected in a similar way?

Well, I have mixed emotions over the EFnet situation. Sadly, due to problems with the current protocols,. just about any machine on the internet is subject to DoS attacks. EFnet has allowed their network to become a chaotic wasteland. By not employing some sort of channel service. Or even oper service to deal with trivial things like reopping an opless channel.
I believe most of the problems with DoS attacks on EFnet are channel problems. ie, someone attacking a server to make channel ops on that server ping out. Very rarely does an IRC server get attacked here on undernet for no reason.

How seriously do AT&T take the running of the IRC server?

Well, AT&T physically ran undernet 4 T1 lines from different points on thier NA backbone. To the hosting ISP in NewBrunswick.NJ.
They just spent $30k on new Cisco routers last month. For us. So we could hold even more undernet users.

It's interesting, because there is no real commercial gain from such a service. Those servers are just for IRC?

Just irc. We are the only IRC server on undernet with 'dedicated T1 lines for IRC' All other use shared bandwidth.. Meaning shared with other local services.. webservers, dial up customers, etc.

Regarding this, what role has brunswick in the total undernet?

Currently the AT&T server is the largest server on this network with an average userbase of 7000 users. We are just a leaf server. But a damn big one.

Would you think that making Undernet a commercial network, ie adverts, corporate channels for support etc, would be a good or a bad thing?

I am personally against commercializing undernet. We are an .ORG. I personally will try and keep undernet free for all internet users.

But if it was kept a free service, say Cisco ran a channel with fully qualified Cisco engineers, would that make Undernet more viable as a support resource ?

Hell yeah. I'd love to see a *.cisco.com server.

Who gets selected to take this role?

Depends on the server.

And for newbrunswick?

AT&T has 2 IRC admins which physically run the day to day operations of the undernet server. One of these admins asked me to give him a hand, as its a very large task. Thats pretty much the only way to become a server operator, short of linking your own IRC server.

Are those ppl getting paid?

Unknown..

And you?

Nope. my position on undernet is a volunteer one. Again, I'd like to stress this is an .ORG

Whats one of the funniest moments you recall whilst exercising your oper status ?

Oh there are so many.. check out the irc-quotes section on www.damnit.org There are a few examples of me in action there :)

What is the time you spend average on a day?

I spend about 18 hours a day on the undernet. Outside of undernet, I am an editor for dmoz.org Open Directory project.

Ok, which leads me to a natural follow up question: Name the top 5 annoying things from an oper perspective.

ok, top 5 eh.. hrm.. People that join our help channel #IRC_HELP and go HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME. Like we are mindreaders and know what the problem is.

I propose a darkbot answering those q's ;)

We have one.. and he does a great job ;)
People who ask for the same channel reopped EVERYDAY. As if we are some sorta channel service.
Those loan-a-bot channels are a huge annoyance.

Loan-a-bot ? Not heard of that before..

They account for 80% of the takeovers I deal with. They are self appointed ircbot 'services' which will loan you a 'tempbot' to help hold your IRC channel.
There are several groups of people on undernet running such non-official 'services' What they are really doing is collecting channels. I mean, who really runs the channel at that point.. the newbie channel manager who needs help, or the owner of the tempbots.
Again, 80% of the takeovers reported in #IRC_HELP have temp-bots involved. I'd like to persuade undernet users to only use #CService brand bots. Or take the time to learn how to run their own bots.

Thats 3 annoyances sofar, 2 to go :)

Floodbots are pretty annoying. But they are really fun to kill.

Explain :o)

For you amateurs out there.. floodbots are irc connections, usually in a group, which act together on IRC. Thier usualy purpose is to be disruptive.
For example: some lusers loads up 25 connections.. All the connections are setup to react to commands, Like JOIN PART SAY. The user will sit in a secret channel with his army of bots and tell them to JOIN #THISCHANNEL. And #THISCHANNEL will see a huge scroll as the bots mass join.
These floodbots usually run on hacked computers.. which sadly there are thousands of on the internet. Part of my job as an IRC operator is to keep these disruptive bots off the network. However I'd like to stress that most floodbot attacks do not need oper attention and can be handled with channel bans. Ok, one left.
So this is like the MOST ANNOYING THING.
People that take IRC soooo seriously they get all hysterical. IRC is supposed to be fun, entertainment. So often I see people panic stricken after the loss of their channel. Or offended by what someone has said. And they want an OPER to beat that persons ass.

A /ignore or /join #channelname2 is only a few seconds work.

Rather than use their clients /ignore feature. I get that ALOT.
"SO an so said I was a bitch, you need to GLINE THEM NOW"

Basically, what i get from reading this is, a lot of annoyances and time are eaten up by users with a lack of knowledge of IRC.

Yeah, which is ok..

Would you say users need educating more to the use of IRC, maybe from the client, or from the web?

Well, undernet does things to help do that. The user-committee runs several different classes in #class. You can check out their website for more info as to when those classes are: http://user-com.undernet.org/
Also, I'd like to point out the irchelp.org website is a wealth of info: http://www.irchelp.org/

Where do you see IRC and Undernet in the next 5 years ? As bandwidth increases and more people globally are connected?

Well, large IRC networks are getting more and more run by backbone providers. For example, AT&T runs my server, concentric.net runs an IRC server here. Aol.net has one here too, as does home.com

AOL has an Undernet server ?

Shure... washington.dc.us.undernet.org. They have a routing hub too. Its not restricted to AOL members only. Anyone is free to connect.

Do you see any major advancements in the protocols, servers and clients to take advantage of higher bandwidth and increase user bases.

Anyway, the point I was making was that the large ISPs will end up holding all the users. Currently the newbrunswick server holds an average of 13.88% of undernet users. Almost 14% on 1 server.
Keep in mind there are 40+ servers. The point is the big get bigger.
As far as advancement of the protocols, shure. Undernet has a great group of coders which are known as the Coder-Com. You can check out their website at http://coder-com.undernet.org/. They are constantly working on ways to improve ircu (which is the irc server software undernet servers run). The main 2 things they are working on is saving bandwidth and cpu usage.

Does the actual process eat a lot of CPU time on the host server ?

Shure.. lemme show yah:
load averages: 1.10, 1.09, 1.08 12:00:00
59 processes: 13 running, 46 sleeping
Memory: Real: 225M/239M Virt: 273M/513M Free: 162M

pid username pri nice size res state time wcpu cpu command
2441 irc 100 4 217m 217m run/0 62.6h 99.07% 99.07% ircd
17948 irc 28 0 524k 572k run/0 0:00 0.00% 0.00% top

100% cpu usage

Phew.

Floored.

What's the hardware specs on that machine ?

That's a p3 650 with 9000 users on it. The AT&T server is a dual Intel Pentium 3 650 box running BSD.
It has a gig of ram, and dual 10,000 rpm scsi2 drives. With 9,000 users on it. The box is working very hard, but never skips a beat. As far as bandwidth. http://irc1.worldnet.att.net/usage/ Those are the router graphs for our new routers.
You will see that with 9000 users we are doing close to 800kbps both ways. But you say, we only have 4 T1's how is that possible. AT&T lets us burst up to whatever we need. Aren't they great? :)

Hehe, wish my ISP would do that! To finalise this interview: what would you like to say to the users of your server?

I'd like to say thanks for using irc2.att.net. You've helped make us #1.

Thanks seiki!

Thanks for having me guys, good luck with your website ;)
*** Parts: seiki (seiki@ircd.c)