Back in the late 90s, my IRC server was rejected for linking on EFnet because my uplink was known to host rather shady suspects. Some IRC folks would go on to make the FBI's most wanted list for DDoSing satellites. My equipment was seized and never returned even though I was only being housed in the building, unrelated to the case itself. The data center owner and I are friends and he ran an amazing network, one of the best colocation facilities of its time in such limited space.

I ended up getting back "in" with irc.home .com (@Home Cable), on their re-linking efforts. Around these times, we still had big names on IRC, universities, America Online even.

I would go on to be linked to HybNet (Hey, Dianora, Hardy, everyone I'm forgetting) testing ircd-hybrid, the IRC server software that powered much of EFnet at the time, like a crash test EFnet admin. I had a blast! Since EFnet had no services, the server's software and its ircops were extremely important to the network. I would later mess with TCM and other automated connection regulators, leading into my interest of bot making. Everyone's hailing ChatGPT when we'd write our own SmarterChild, and it could connect to AIM -AND- IRC -AND- Web.

20....25... nearing 30 years later, I'm still on EFnet. My channel is still active, and yes I have quite a few bots. I also still talk to a few friends, some who are still IRC only for privacy or other reasons. We've lost over 100,000+ users, but I still enjoy randomly typing /list thinking I'm going to crash myself with the upcoming flood of activity.

Not quite, but it feels good.

Also, DALnet services banned me for supposedly hacking them and I think I'm still banned from NickServ.

Thanks for listening to my IRC Talk.