En Français


|                    L     I     N     K     N     E     T
|
|                       Linking the world in Real-Time
.
.  Pretext
   -------
.  This document is the basis for all policies and regulations 
   required to maintain the LinkNet IRC network.

   § 1 General Rules and Regulations
   ---------------------------------

   § 1.1 Objectives 
   LinkNet is an Internet Relay Chat network that hopes to 
   provide a friendly environment for online conversation with 
   a high level of privacy for our users.

   § 1.2 Feedback
   All users on the LinkNet IRC network are encouraged to offer 
   comments, complaints and/or ideas to better improve the 
   network.
   
   § 1.3 Services
   This network does not support server services such as 
   NickServ, ChanServ, or MemoServ. Channels and nicknames 
   cannot be owned or protected by the server or the server 
   operators.

   § 1.4 Rules
   All rules including this document and any other official 
   document attached directly and/or indirectly to this document, 
   or endorsed by the committees for the LinkNet IRC network, 
   are presently available to all clients of the network, staff, 
   and the public. Any rule may be challenged or questioned at 
   any time. This document may be updated frequently and openly 
   amended. All updates of this document are required to be 
   posted publicly and notification given to the respective 
   parties.

   § 2 Abuse Rules and Regulations
   -------------------------------

   § 2.1 User Abuse
   Any abuse directed towards the network in any form will NOT 
   be tolerated for any reason.  LinkNet will pursue all illegal 
   activities regarding attacks on the LinkNet network 
   connectivity to the fullest extent of the law.  Any user 
   involved in denial of service attacks targeted at the LinkNet 
   network servers for any reason will be permanently banned from 
   the network.  Denial of service attacks of any kind directed 
   towards anyone is very serious and very unwelcome on this 
   network. LinkNet staff will work with the proper authorities, 
   helping trace violators.

   § 2.2 Staff Abuse
   Any IRC operator or administrator suspected of abusing his 
   privileges, causing unnecessary server disconnections, or being 
   involved in "channel takeovers", will be reviewed by the 
   administrator committee. Acting in a disrespectful manner to 
   other operators, administrators or users can justify a sanction. 
   No IRC operators or administrators shall K-Line or kill any 
   users on LinkNet without justifiable cause. No IRC operators or
   administrators shall K-line or kill other staff members for 
   malicious reasons.

   § 2.3 Sanctions Against Operators and Administrators
   Any administrator or operator suspected of breaking any of the 
   rules stated in this document will be reviewed by the 
   administrator committee, which will decide if an action against 
   the server administrator or operator will be taken, ranging from 
   a warning to termination of the link to the LinkNet IRC network.

   § 3 Staff Rules and Regulations
   -------------------------------

   § 3.1 Operators
   Every server administrator may appoint server operators to
   help with administration of the IRC server. Administrators have 
   complete responsibility for the actions of any IRC operator 
   appointed to his/her server. All operators will be subjected to 
   a 30 day trial period the first time they are granted operator 
   access on the network, during this period the operator is 
   restricted to be a local operator.

   § 3.2 Official Committees
   Committees make up the executive groups on LinkNet.
   Though a committee has absolute power over its field, 
   cooperation between committees is required. It is possible to 
   be on more than one committee at a time, yielding executive power 
   over several fields. It is up to each committee to find a 
   productive way of handling internal disputes. Every staff member
   can request to become a committee member, but it is up to the 
   committees themselves to decide whether membership should be 
   granted. Typically the following are taken into consideration 
   (in no particular order): technical skills, social skills, 
   attitude and willingness to contribute.   
   
   § 3.2.1 The Administration Committee
   The Administration Committees primary task is to oversee
   the network as a whole. The administration committee 
   consists of members from the other committees and handles 
   all abuse-mails and staff member issues.

   § 3.2.2 The Routing Committee
   Is divided into US and EU routing subcommittees. The 
   Routing Committee maintains the networks hubs, performs 
   security checks on servers awaiting testlinks, and decide 
   the optimal routing for all servers among other network 
   related issues.

   § 3.2.4 The Development Committee
   The Development Committees sole responsibility is to
   continuously develop up to date secure server source 
   code. In an event of a security breach in the software, 
   the coding committee is required to respond quickly and 
   release a patch or workaround for the problem.

   § 3.3 Voting Rights
   When an issue is raised for a vote by any of the committees, 
   each server will have one vote represented by the server 
   administrator. The resolution of the issue is determined by 
   simple majority in votes. Anonymous votes are not allowed. 
   A server administrator can choose not to participate or 
   abstain to let one of his server operators vote on his 
   behalf.  A voting session will last for 3 working days, or 
   72 hours after the session has been started. If a server 
   has not submitted it's vote during this time period it 
   will be disregarded. 

   § 3.4 Staff
   A LinkNet staff member is anyone who is currently an 
   administrator or operator of a permanently linked IRC 
   server, member of the Development, Administration, 
   or Routing Committees or otherwise officially 
   contributes to LinkNet.
   
   § 3.5 Sanctions
   Any staff member suspected of breaking any of the rules 
   stated in this document will be reviewed by the 
   administration committee.  The administration 
   committee will decide if an action against the server 
   administrator or operator will be taken, ranging from 
   a warning to removal of operator privileges or 
   termination of the link to the IRC network

   § 4 Server Rules and Regulations
   --------------------------------

   § 4.1 Contact
   All administrators must have an email address and/or 
   a phone number listed. If this email address is 
   related and/or dependant upon the same network as the 
   IRC server, a secondary email address is also required. 

   All servers must have a point of contact when the server 
   administrator can not be reached. The point of contact 
   must have the necessary access to deal with situations 
   that can arise regarding server stability and security. 
   Rules regarding administrator contact also apply here.

   Operators must have a primary email address listed.

   "Listed" refers to being listed either on the LinkNet 
   staff webpage, or in email aliases on the LinkNet staff 
   mail server.

   § 4.2 Linking
   Linking requests are handled by the Routing and 
   administration committees. Before any link is granted the 
   Administration Committee is required to verify that the 
   given credentials of the applicant are correct. All 
   applicants must supply an administrative contact and 
   netblock for the United States (ARIN), Asia and Pacific 
   areas (APNIC), or Europe (RIPE).  The administrative 
   contact must be contacted either via email or phone to 
   verify that the applicant has been given the proper 
   permissions to run a server using their facilities. 
   If the applying server is in a colocation facility the 
   administrative contact is the administrator of the 
   colocation facility.

   § 4.3 Trial
   All new servers will be subjected to a 60 day 
   trial period, though the administration committee can 
   extend the trial period if they feel 
   that it is necessary for a proper trial evaluation. 
   At no time may a trial server change configuration 
   options pertaining to i/o lines (oper and connection, 
   including spoof) without explicit permission of a 
   committee member.  During this period, there will be 
   only 3 operators, including the administrator, allowed to 
   be configured on the server. All operators will be local 
   operators only. Operators may not perform global kills or 
   any kind of remote linking or disconnecting of servers. 
   The administrators and operators of the server are not 
   considered full LinkNet staff during the trial period of the 
   server unless they already are LinkNet staff (see relocation).  
   A trial server without any full LinkNet staff member must 
   have a current list of all LinkNet Committee members. 
   Members of the LinkNet Routing Committee require full shell 
   access for monitoring and changing server configurations. 
   A server on trial will only be able to connect as a leaf to 
   the LinkNet network.

   In cases of trial development servers a maximum of 2 local 
   operators are allowed.  All development servers are required 
   to have closed I:lines to alleviate all possible interference 
   with the rest of the networks userbase.  Server admins will be 
   required to give shell access to the Development Committee for 
   use in ircd testing on the live network.

   In cases of trial HUB servers, a maximum of 3 opers are allowed.  
   The server will be linked to the network either as a standalone 
   server or with one or more development servers linked to it.  
   All LinkNet HUB's are dedicated and require closed I:lines 
   during the entire time it is connected to the network.  

   § 4.4 Downtime
   Any Server having downtime longer than 48 hours without giving 
   notification prior to or during the period of downtime will be 
   considered as "Missing in Action", (MIA), and will be subject 
   to the regulations of MIA servers.

   Any server with legitimate downtime longer than 2 weeks will be
   considered a limbo-server and will be subject to the regulations
   of a limbo-server.

   § 4.5 Limbo-Servers
   A server can remain in limbo status for a maximum of 3 months or 
   until the server is declared permanently de-linked. The operators 
   and administrators will keep their staff privileges as long as 
   the server has limbo status.  Operators will not automatically be 
   given operator privileges on other LinkNet servers during the 
   downtime.

   § 4.6 MIA Servers
   A server declared MIA will remain in that state for 5 days. 
   Should the server administrators or points of contact fail to 
   give notification of the reason of their absence, the server will 
   be considered delinked from the network and steps will 
   be taken to remove all privileges of the server and administrators. 
   If a server enters MIA status twice in one year, it will be 
   considered for immediate termination of its link.

   § 4.7 Relocation
   If server administrators chose to relocate their server, the newly 
   relocated server will be subjected to a new trial period. The 
   status of the operators and administrators of the server will not 
   change during the trial period.  Relocation within the same 
   organization is not subject to these rules.  Organization means 
   within the same company, university, or co-location facility as
   as long as the quality of the server link is the same.

   § 4.8 Server Protection
   All servers are required to run a proxy scanner, BOPM is the 
   preferred utility to use for scanning, but other scanners of 
   equal or greater efficency can also be used. Running an 
   administration bot such as OOMON is also required.

   § 4.9 Security
   Server administrators must keep their server's security level 
   high at all times. A server is not allowed to run any remote 
   or locally accessible services that might compromise server 
   security. Server administrators are strongly encouraged to 
   run the IRC server on a dedicated machine that is used only 
   for the LinkNet IRC daemon.  Receiving payment for shell 
   access or giving away shells to malacious or un-trusted 
   individuals is not allowed on any LinkNet server. Access to 
   services must be filtered by IP to the most possible extent.

   LinkNet is based upon being a secure network and unsecured
   servers are therefore intolerable.

   § 4.10 Server Source Code
   Any administrator or operator who is suspected of running a 
   server with source code that is modified in any way that 
   might compromise security or network policies will be 
   de-linked immediately. New versions of source code will 
   require approval of the Administration Committee before being
   deployed on any server in the IRC network.

   § 4.11 Server Configuration
   admin {}
	All servers are required to list an administrator contact 
	in the admin{} section.
   resv {}
	All servers must keep their resv{} synced to the latest 
	ircd.conf file, published by the Administration Committee.
   connect {}
   	It is the server administrators responsibility to always 
	have current connect {} to all routing-only servers in their 
	respective regions, as governed by the Administration Committee.
   auth {}
   	All servers should have open auth {} towards it's own area 
	of clients, for instance a Belgian server must allow Belgian 
	users to use the server.  Apart from that auth {} should be 
	strict and not allow abuse and cloning. Non-Ident connections 
	are discouraged based on previous experience with ddos bots 
	and drones. A server running a properly configured TCM may 
	have less restrictive auth {} .
   MOTD
   	All servers need to have a current MOTD that reflects policies 
	on the server; operator and administrator contact info should 
	also be listed.
	
   Running a IRC server connected to the network in debug mode, or any
   logging of users from the server side is strictly forbidden. The 
   LinkNet IRCD does not contain any debugging code that allows for the 
   logging of messages passed through the IRC network. Any administrator
   found violating this rule will face immediate termination of his link.
   Administrators are responsible for the way their own server is run:
   whether or not to allow bots, where to allow connections from selected 
   IPs, and how many users and connections per user to allow onto the 
   server. The configuration of the server must not allow a situation 
   where users can exploit the server to interrupt services on the entire 
   network.

   § 4.12 Shell Access
   The LinkNet Routing Committee/Administration Committee reserves the right
   to have access to the IRCD shell of the server if there is suspicion of
   violation of rules or for server maintenance issues. If shell access is 
   denied the server will be denied approval or de-linked from the LinkNet
   network. Nevertheless, all administrators are encouraged to give
   Routing Committee permanent shell access.
   
   § 4.13 Dedicated Hubs
   A dedicated hub server shall never be linked to the network with it's
   real hostname and the location of the server must only be known by
   LinkNet staff. It must also be firewalled so only IRC servers, 
   administrators and operators can connect to the IRC or SSH ports.

   § 4.14 Clients
   A server is responsible for its own clients and their actions. Clients 
   causing havoc on one server will often cause network wide mischief or 
   latency problems. It is the responsibility of the server's staff to
   eliminate this behavior and do everything within their power to
   discourage and punish offenders.

 // EOF