neko-net irc

It's TLS only from now on

Fri, 07 Jul 2023 20:15:00 +0000

As someone who feels the nostalgia dripping down my cheek whenever I see someone telnet into a service in plain-text and manually invoking commands…

It fills my heart with tears to say that from now on Neko-net wont support unencrypted plain-text connections anymore.

This is one of several responses to ongoing SPAM-attacks, and we hope things will quiet down after this.

TLDR: The ports are all still there, but from now on ALL ports are TLS ports.

The mono-network and the federation

Mon, 06 Feb 2023 07:00:00 +0000

After years and years and years as an IRC network, we’ve today lost our Swedish presence, after an unfortunate VPS-nuking mishap. It can happen to the best of us.

That sort of puts this once profilitic IRC-network, with a global presence down to one measly server. I guess it’s a mono-network now, eh?

To be fair, even us old irc-diehards realize irc is getting kind of passe. It’s time to move on, but to what?

What’s the spiritual successor to good old IRC? Based on online presence, it doesn’t seem to be IRCv3. Matrix however is looking really nice:

open protocol
use any client you like
host your own server

While decentralized like IRC, it federates instead of relying on a coalition of servers to form a “network”, which kind of obliterates our the “need” for a lots of neko-net servers in the first place.

So all in all, that’s a win win!

Come join us, at #linux:neko-net.org!

New European server available

Wed, 09 Jun 2021 07:15:00 +0000

We’re pleased to announce a new server in the pool: dusseldorf.de.eu.neko-net.org.

This server supports all the “standard” ports, and if all goes well will be added to the DNS round-robin in not too long.

In the meantime, for users accessing the network via IRC (as opposed to matrix), feel free to check out this new server and help us test it.

Network-wide server-upgrades

Wed, 09 Jun 2021 07:00:00 +0000

After years and years on Unreal IRCd 4.x, it’s time to move on to Unreal 5.x. Especially considering 4.x is now unsupported.

However upgarding to Unreal 5.x requires us to also upgrade services, and Revie discovered that anope-services are no longer effectively maintained.

As a result, to facilitate the 5.x upgrade we are also moving to a new services backend, athema.

This also means all registered nicks, channels, etc has been reset.

For all users still active, we realise setting things up once again is a bit of a chore, but oh well. We did our part. Now you do yours!

Expired SSL certificates

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 13:00:00 +0000

Due to a unnoticed Python compatibility-issue on a central services, we were unable to renew certificates for a prolonged period of time.

This caused the certificates on all servers to expire without getting renewed.

If you were using a client which does certificate-validation, this would cause the server to be unavailable, unless you explicitly disabled validation.

This issue is now resolved, and servers should be able to update their certificatates again.

Sorry about the inconvenience.

Server Downtime

Thu, 24 Oct 2019 06:30:00 +0000

After some server-maintenance last evening, our Oslo-server is currently down. There are both issues with SSL and with routing, and both are being worked on.

While the issues are being resolved, clients are advised to use falkenberg.se.eu.neko-net.org instead.

This post will be updated once all servers are back up.

Sorry about the inconvenience.

Update: All services are now back up.

Expired SSL certificates

Mon, 30 Jul 2018 10:00:00 +0000

Due to an incomplete DNS-migration from GoDaddy to Cloudflare, all servers in the network were unable to retrieve updated certificates.

This caused Oslo (and possibly other servers) to fail to update the certificates in time before expiration.

If you’re using a client which does certificate-validation, this would cause the server to be unavailable, unless you explicitly disabled validation.

This issue is now resolved, and servers should be able to update their certificatates again.

Sorry about the inconvenience.

IPv6 support now available

Fri, 19 May 2017 13:00:00 +0000

I’d just like to announce that IPv6 support is now available.

Use ipv6.neko-net.org to connect if you prefer IPv6.

Welcome our new server!

Fri, 16 Sep 2016 15:00:00 +0000

I’d just like to inform you that oslo.no.eu.neko-net.org just joined the team and will be serving your requests.

Once proven stable, it will be added to the regular DNS round-robin, but for now you have to be explicit about using it.

This server was sponsered by Serve The World.

Verified SSL on all servers

Mon, 22 Feb 2016 15:00:00 +0000

All servers should now have a valid SSL certificate which responds to their respective server-name and irc.neko-net.org.

Connecting to irc.net-net.org should now be doable in a secure manner. If you’re using a client like Weechat, consider enable SSL validation for our network now.