Introducing AdminServ

After nearly 2 years of work, we're proud to announce the release of AdminServ.

What is AdminServ?

AdminServ is a system that allows us, the operators, to grant non-operator users (#support members) operator style powers.

What does this mean to me?

With the addition of this system, this means that daIRC now has even more staff available to support you, the users, maintain your channels and just make your stay as enjoyable as possible. Staffers that are a part of the AdminServ staff will be able to assist users with ban evasion, spam, channel annoyances and spam/botnet's joinging your channel.

How did AdminServ become?

During daIRC's early years, countless abusive staffers linked/joined the network, hurting daIRC's image, making it seem like we had no control over our staff and allowed them to be abusive. A decision was made soon after to not accept leaf offers to the network and to simply absorb all costs my self. Thankfully, this stopped unwanted staff from becoming a part of our community, but also cut back on the amount of good staffers - and so AdminServ was born. After countless weeks of spec'ing the system, we finally got together a development team. After many fall outs, in some cases costing us hundreds of dollars, the system was finally completed this weekend and introduced into the network!

Who is helping take care of the AdminServ?

Currently, we've hired the following staffers to help you, the users:

Staff Member	Country (Timezone)	Work Hours
Talleh	Australia
Paul	USA	Online between 9AM PST to 9PM PST
Ether	USA	Work hours are random.
ViciousPotato	Australia
W1N9ZR0	Canada	Usually on during 3PM PST to 8PM PST
Dilt	USA	3:15 PM - (9-11 PM) CST

Horray! more upgrades~

So after a lot of fighting with the first kasumi host, I decided to leave since we could get a better deal. The server was moved to FDC servers since they gave us a box for $79 and all was well for the most part. In the past two weeks, though, FDC has been breaking it self by either blowing up a router, or hosting some large ddos targets that they refuse to remove.

Because of this, we simply got tired of it and decided to finally put the box with someone would would be willing to give us a killer SLA (100% SLA on network & power), AlphaRed. The box was even cheaper than FDC by an additional $20/mo, but also gave us much better routes (Time Warner/Global Crossing/Level 3). On top of this, we finally have a IPv6 supported server.

For those that wish to play around with IPv6, maybe connect to:

2610:138:2:e0:250:8dff:fe30:3f07

It's still in very early testing, but seems to be working just fine.

This, coupled with all the upgrades we've done with the webservers, we've been able to bring our total operating costs down another $300+ /mo :-) I think it's safe to say that DA and all its sub-projects are finally in the black! Quite the accomplishment, considering that this time last year we were still running upwards of $2500/mo. I figure our current costs are in the area of $500 - $600/mo to operate everything.

On top of this, we finally have a stable sorata! Hurray! Our old friend Azuretek was able to sponsor 1U of colocation space at his new datacenter with bandwidth at no cost, meaning all we had todo was purchase a cheap server (ebay) and be golden! So, we did that.

So, for $200 one time, we cut our costs by a badass $80/mo - meaning the hardware breaks even in only 3 months - sounds good to me! I'd like to thank Azuretek & NetRiver for the colocation and helping DA become stronger!

~Francisco