LPMuds.net - Intermud

Network FAQ

1. What are the rules?

2. Is it private?

3. Is the network "secure"?

4. What's the point of a new router? Who died and made you intermud king?

5. ZOMG! The *gjs router is down now! It's your fault!

6. How do I connect to it?

7. It doesn't work.

8. How does the router work?

9. Is router code part of Dead Souls?

10. How do I become my own I3 router?

11. I am so SICK of you being an intermud FASCIST.

12. Why does it suck?

What are the rules?

Please read the rules below. Refugees from *gjs are welcome, so long as they abide by those rules.

Is it private?

No. Everyone is welcome.

Is the network "secure"?

Nope. Read this: http://dead-souls.net/ds-admin-faq.html#90
Bottom line: Don't tell secrets on the network.

What's the point of a new router? Who died and made you intermud king?

On the morning of 27 March 2006, the intermud.org i3 router stopped functioning. There had been some talk on the dead_souls channel of how unreliable the i3 router was, and how we should make our own, etc, yakety schmakety.

March 27th was the last straw. For Dead Souls developers, the dead_souls intermud channel was a vital resource for development discussion and support. I decided it was time to implement a router that the Dead Souls muds could count on.

ZOMG! The *gjs router is down now! It's your fault!

I honestly have no idea at all what happened to the gjs router. During June and July of 2006, it seemed to be up about as often as it was down...it was unreliable in the extreme. I'd never seen it that bad before.

Then, in August 2006, while discussing this unreliability:

[2006.08.01-13.45] Salius@Elanathia <imud_gossip> so what keeps happening, why does it crash
[2006.08.01-14.03] Cratylus <intergossip> who runs it? are they ever on?
[2006.08.01-14.05] Zakk@Lima Bean <imud_gossip> 'run' hahaha etc

And that's the last transmission I'm aware of, as of today, 21 September 2008. As if it weren't bad enough that it looks like it's down for the count, it also appears Zakk had the last word.

Please note. If I'd known gjs would die, I would not have made the intergossip channel a default for Dead Souls muds. I had no intent to be The New Intermud For Everyone, and I didn't know it would happen, so please don't imagine I'm trying to reform anyone. I'm just running my own router, to which you're invited if you follow the rules.

How do I connect to it?

Instructions for Dead Souls 2 MUDs:
To switch back and forth between the routers, use the switchrouter command. For syntax and instructions,
type: help switchrouter

Other muds will need to follow their intermud subsystem documentation. Note that there may be multiple files and multiple parts of those files that need to be updated with the current information.

I3 doesn't work

    Getting the router name wrong is the number one cause of errors. Also, once you get it wrong, your own client cache might keep the old one, even if you change your intermud client code. Make sure you purge the i3 data cache before you try again.

    Another major cause is that the router name is right, but you've chosen a mud name someone else already is using. If your mud's name is "DeadSoulsNew" or "Your Mud's Name" or "ds-test" or "TestMud" or somesuch, the router won't let you on because some other newbie got there before you and now the router has associated their ip with that that name. Pick something unique and try again.

    The next most likely reason you can't connect is that your mud handles intermud passwords incorrectly and your ip address changed. The way intermud passwords work is this:

1) You connect to the intermud router
2) It generates a random number and gives it to you. That's your password.
3) If you disconnect, then come back with a different ip address, your mud sends that password to the router which then says "ok I recognize that password as being for your mud, I'll let you on".

    If your mud's I3 client doesn't save your password and your ip address changes (which can happen very frequently if your mud is on a DSL or cable modem) then the router will assume you are not who you say you are, and deny the connection. To see if this is what's happening, change your mud name to something new (and unique) and try again.

    In some cases, some muds misbehave in a way that is either unacceptable to the router, violates the router rules, or interferes with the normal operation of the router. If your mud does not have a useful admin contact email address that it sends to the router on connection, then nobody can be contacted to help correct this situation. This means your mud may have been banished or firewalled out without you knowing about it. If the router in question is dalet or i4, send me an email. My name is Cratylus, and I have an email account with a comcast dot net domain address.

    Under some circumstances, such as an unusually lossy/unstable network connection, and most specifically a wireless connection, the router may have a hard time maintaining your mud online, and once dropped, you may not be able to get back on. At the risk of being old-fashioned, I suggest that you put your mud on a stable, land-line internet connection.

    Finally, it may be that the router you've chosen is dead or temporarily offline. Try one of the routers listed above, or ask on the intermud board of the lpmuds.net discussion forum to see if someone has set up a different router for you to use.

How do the hubs work?

Tim@TimMUD wrote a swell LPC based I3 router that is basically a bunch of .h files you put into a TMI-2 mud. You tinker with the settings a bit, and your TMI-2 mud becomes an intermud router.

I installed it in a Dead Souls mud, and it's been updated to handle a multiple-hub network, as well as translating IMC2 data.

Is hub code part of Dead Souls?

With Tim's blessing I've included his I3 router in the Dead Souls distribution, after removing/replacing some non-Tim code. This means that any Dead Souls mud can serve as a hub, should it wish to establish its own intermud network. Eventually these individual hubs may be part of a failover network, but there are no firm plans for this in place.

How do I become my own hub?

Read the code in /secure/daemon/i3router and /secure/daemon/imc2server. Understand it. Then modify it to suit you. I won't be posting step-by-step instructions on how to do this, because I believe this is one of those things that you really need to figure out on your own. If you can't figure it out by reading the code, I argue you have no business running the router.

I am so SICK of you being an intermud FASCIST

It's puzzling how often I get this. Even though the router rules are prominently shown, and I have shown willingness to confront offenders, some people still insist on trying to make racist comments on the protected channels, or try to harsh out newbies.

I don't know which part of "this is not the old router" and "this router has enforced rules" is hard to understand. There is, perhaps, a sense of entitlement to any channel named "intergossip" regardless of the router.

I really don't ask for much. Just follow the rules on the few protected channels, and adhere to their declared topics. You're here as a guest, by choice. If you don't like it, you are free to make your own channel for trash talk, and of course, you are free to disconnect at any time.

Why does it suck?

The yatmim router started off as an ad-hoc sort of thing. gjs was down a lot, and newbies got harshed out a lot, and it seemed reasonable to slap something together for DS muds to get around those obstacles. From its start, roughly April 2006, to about September 2006, it was really only Dead Souls muds that ever connected to it. I spent a long time tweaking things, and by September the router, I thought, was in dead solid shape. When gjs went down for the count, I figured yatmim was ready for prime time.

I was mistaken.

It turns out that there are many ways to interpret the I3 specs. It also turns out that in spots, the specs are oddly silent, and those silences can also be interpreted in many ways. Different libs and codebases have implemented their I3 subsystems and tuned it for their specific needs, with gjs's specific habits in mind. Tim's interpretation of the I3 router specs was a solid one, and done in good faith. But it was different enough from the way gjs conducted business that some muds have had a tough time adjusting.

An example of this is the recent tuning I did. Some muds send a startup request packet indicating they are using protocol 2, but the packet itself is formatted for protocol 3. Tim's router justifiably rejected such errored data. gjs, apparently, forgave it. I have therefore changed yatmim to implement that forgiveness, so that old muds with this legacy header can join. Now imagine a bunch of other minor variances like this. It's not the sort of stuff you can test for on a lab system and nail each one...it's real world conflicts that can only be found and corrected while running in production.

So, because some of this stuff can only be diagnosed live, and because fixing it requires bringing down the public server, some people have gotten the idea that "yatmim sucks". This, I think, is not true, and unfair. yatmim is undergoing some turbulence while I catch and squash these unexpected problems. However, the code itself is rapidly approaching the kind of stability that I can be proud of, and I'm happy to be able to provide that to the community. I3 node uptime regularly reaches sixteen weeks or more.

The short answer as to why the i3 router sucks is "It doesn't any more."

The IMC2 server is still in its very early infancy, though, and there is still much work to do. If the IMC2 connection to the LPMuds.net network is not working like you think it should, please let me know what's going on so I can try to address it.

Network Rules

1) The point of this network being up is not free speech.

2) This network is up for the following purposes:

    * To provide technical help for muds.
    * To provide a friendly space for chat between muds.
    * To test and improve mud communication systems, such as intermud mail.

3) The network is not up for testing security of an intrermud network. Attempting
   to exploit the hubs is not ok, and not "cool". If you find
   a security weakness please email me so I can handle it discreetly.
   You will get full credit for the discovery when the patch comes out.

4) The following are not tolerated on protected channels: hate speech, social engineering
   hacks, being Robert Mugabe, unwarranted hostility to newbies, spamming, commercial advertising. All of
   these will be judged by my subjective opinion of what constitutes a violation.
   Types of violations can be added to this list without warning by me.

5) Otherwise legitimate use of a non-protected channel or hub subsystem which
   interferes with normal function of the network is not tolerated.

6) You may create intermud channels for your mud. These channels can
   have any content you want that is permissible by all applicable laws. I
   don't want to control the intermud with an iron hand. I just want those protected
   channels listed above to be a safe place for newbies to congregate, socialize,
   and/or get work done.

7) If you don't like these rules, set up your own network.

8) I will not help or support you in any way in setting up a hub, or
   in creating a channel for your mud. These undocumented procedures require
   expertise to accomplish that you have to earn on your own by reading
   the code on your mud and the relevant specs.

9) You can file complaints to me by email, or by explaining the problem
   on the appropriate area on lpmuds.net. I prefer to
   deal with complaints from the admin of the mud in question, since the
   responsibility for maintaining that intermud connection is theirs. Please
   note that I am not the arbiter of inter-mud disputes. If someone is
   being mean to you through tells or on unprotected channels, you need to
   find some way of dealing with it yourself. Also, if someone logs onto your
   mud and starts abusing channels you haven't secured, this is not something
   I'm in a position to control. Logging onto my mud and complaining that
   people on your mud are abusing channels is useless (yes, this really has happened).

10) I'm only human and sometimes I'll err in judgment. If you think I have
    made an error, please email me. Perhaps I banned your mud out of
    a misunderstanding. Perhaps the problem on your mud has been fixed.
    I try to be open minded about this stuff, if you try to be reasonable.

Clarifications and suggestions:

- A channel may have customs more restrictive than the rules here show.
For example, because ds and dchat are turned on by default on
Dead Souls muds, and I don't want newbies immediately scared away
and/or offended, I ask that foul language be avoided when
possible. On the other hand, a channel like intergossip has
the tradition of being quite raunchy and not
geared toward technical talk, so you might find a hostile reaction
when asking for code help there. Use your common sense and try to
follow the customs of a channel. Showing up and expecting a
channel to accept your topic and discussion habits
no matter what is not really a good idea.

- On a related note, please remember that this is not gjs, and
the customs of gjs channels may not be acceptable here, even
if the channel names are the same.

- An email address in your startup packet is not explicitly demanded,
as you can see. However, it's *strongly* urged that you put a valid
email address in there. This is because if someone on your mud is
getting out of hand, or your connection is causing technical problems,
I need a way to talk to someone in charge of things on your mud.

- When someone on a mud is violating rules, they usually get a
number of warnings, and if they are not admins, their admins are
also notified as possible. Whether warnings are issued is obviously
dependent on the type of behavior. Sufficiently disruptive behavior
(at my discretion) can subject a mud to immediate action without
warning. But this is extremely rare. Warnings are provided
when reasonable. If the behavior doesn't stop, then that mud may be
banned from the channel where it's causing problems. If the mud
then causes problems on other channels, it may be banned from
the router entirely. This is a drastic and very unusual situation.

- Sometimes a mud causes technical problems and I can't get
a hold of an admin. In the past, for example, some muds have
accidentally messed up their intermud daemon, and wound up
spamming the router with dozens of connection requests
per second. Because they are not fully connected, they can't be
contacted through channels, and because their admins weren't
checking their email, I couldn't get them to stop. In a case
like this, the mud generally will get firewalled out, so that
the router stops receiving any data at all from that mud. If
your mud just won't connect to the router no matter what,
something like this may have happened. Email me and we'll
straighten it out.

- <my name here> @comcast.net

name	*dalet
ip address	97.107.133.86
port	8787
scheduled maintenance	Extended downtime Sep 24-26 2014
known issues	20 July 2013 http://lpmuds.net/smf/index.php?topic=1498.0

ip address	97.107.133.86
port	8888
scheduled maintenance	Extended downtime Sep 24-26 2014.
known issues	The IMC2 hub is in beta testing. Please report any bugs. SHA-256 is NOT supported.

Router-side channel name	DS local channel name	Channel topic	Protected?
dchat	dchat	Friendly offtopic chat (PG-13 rated)*.	yes
dead_souls	ds	Friendly Dead Souls talk (PG-13 rated)*.	yes
dead_test4	ds_test	Channel and connection testing*.	yes
dgd	dgd	Discussion of the DGD driver and related matters.	yes
imud_gossip	intergossip	General offtopic chat (NC-17).	yes
imud_code	intercre	General technical chatter*.	yes
lpuni	lpuni	LPUniversity-related discussion*.	yes
ascii_art	ascii_art	Spammy ascii stuff and related chat.	no
inews	inews	RSS feeds from popular news sites.	no
mudnews	mudnews	RSS feeds from popular mud forums.	no
discworld-chat	discworld-chat	Discworld MUD and lib chat.	no
dutch	dutch	Chat in Nederlands.	no
german	german	Chat in Deutsch.	no
bofh	bofh	Technical discussion.	no
coffeemud-universe	coffeemud-universe	Coffeemud related talk.	no
free_speech	free_speech	Where offensive stuff goes.	no