foonet issues and Aggressive Hosting

[mcdarby]

Hi, I don't know if anyone here has heard of or experienced this, but I have been a customer and had an eggdrop and IRCd account on two eggdrop providers which were Aggressive Hosting and LOD Communications. The two IRCd servers that I was running were linked together where I was running a small irc network for friends of mine. My target was partly for a place for people who couldn't stand the larger irc networks like EFNet, IRCNet, DALNet, etc. and preferred the smaller friendlier network with friendly and helpful IRCops, and that I would allow eggdrop bots to be connected to it after getting consent from an IRCop. Both IRCd servers that I had were also being used to backup the other if one went down for some odd reason, and one server had services and a network eggdrop maintaining a number of channels for people to help prevent/deal with channel takeover issues and the like.

Anyway, everything seemed to be fine and dandy until on Saturday I found that both servers were down and this was something that I never expected. The first place that I have phoned was LOD Communications where I got a hold of a guy name Todd who was the tech there. He told me at the time what was going on is that the company where the server was co-located had a fiber optic cable cut causing the server to be offline and they were trying to get it fixed and reconnected. After this, he hung up on me and I began to wait. While I was waiting, I phoned Aggressive Hosting and the first few times I got a something that said "You have reached a Sprint Mail System" and then finally got a hold of someone who told me the reason they are down is because their ISP was down. He said something that he was going to be sending e-mails to their customers when they are back up. This led me to believe that both issues are related to the same co-location ISP. Afterward, he let me go and I continued waiting.

After four hours of waiting since the first time I called LOD Communications, I called again and I got Todd who was telling me that he is wondering why it was taking so long to splice a fiber optic cable. Then I told him that I'll continue to wait and he let me go. Another few hours of server downtime went by and a friend of mine e-mailed me asking what was going on. I responded letting them know what was going on and told them to connect to a third working IRCd server (this one being provided by another friend) that was just being relinked to me the day prior to both my IRCd servers going down. Thankfully it was still working while the two that I had were down. I've gone there chatting with friends and letting them know what was going on and began compiling a list of e-mails of those that were using my servers to chat on to e-mail and let them know what is going on.

Later, I called LOD Communications a third time wondering what taking so long to fix that, and that is when I learned that the co-location ISP they had was foonet, which finally got back to him after he called their tech support several times without an answer, and learned that foonet was abruptly shut down by the FBI due to their being a DDoS attack coming from it attacking visa, the company that does the credit card, and everything including the servers, the rounter, the t-lines were compinscated by the FBI. That included the very server that I was being hosted off of with other customers. At the time, Todd had obtained a replacement server and started recreating accounts on it, but he doesn't have access to copy the data off the old server. This means that I still have an account with LOD Communications, but the data of everything that was running on my account like the IRCd, the eggdrop, and irc services is still gone. He also told me that all information about what happened is on the front page of http://www.lod.com and right now worried that he might loose over 50% of his customers.

Afterward, he let me go and later I went to bed. The next day, Sunday, I gone to try calling Aggressive Hosting again to get an answer from someone who immediately hung up on me. I tried to call back three different times to only get that machine that said that you have reached a Sprint Mail System. After that, I gave up on them and went and found BCM Hosting where I can host an IRCd, but a dollar more than it was costing me when I was on Aggressive Hosting. The downside of it is that they aren't providing webhosting yet, which meant that I would have to get the webhosting domain part of the server done elsewhere. At the time, I took it and when it got set up (thanks to a female admin there helping me out in #bcmhosting on EFNet), I immediately got the IRCd up and running. That means that the one server is back up, but not the other.

Later, I called Lod Communications again to find out what the progress was with getting the data off the old server is and this kind gentlemen Todd told me that the ISP foonet gave him the phone number for the FBI Field Office and that he wasn't going to hear anything until Tuesday morning the earliest. Then, he let me go again and this brings us to now. I have heard about foonet being the co-location ISP to a number of shell providers and have a feeling that a number of eggdrops that were running dropped off the face of irc servers and never came back on the moment that foonet was abruptly shut down. I also been unable to get in touch with Aggressive Hosting which apparently may have just dropped off the face of the internet along with Primenet Hosting that I used to have for webhosting. At the moment, I would not recommend Aggressive Hosting, but I can still recommend LOD Communications as the gentleman there seems kind and is just worried about loosing his customers. This is all that I have to say about these issues at the moment and if you have any eggdrop shell downtimes issues that have to do with foonet, feel free to mention them here.

[j0n]

Ya, it's going to be awhile I assume

FBI info :

http://www.cithosting.com/

[caesar]

Wicked

[FIDe`]

some links about the foonet/CIT issue:
http://www.easynetworknyc.com/foonet/
and
http://www.easynetworknyc.com/foonet/mirror/
both with nice pictures illustrating the facts

[mcdarby]

At the moment, I would not recommend Aggressive Hosting, but I can still recommend LOD Communications as the gentleman there seems kind and is just worried about loosing his customers. This is all that I have to say about these issues at the moment and if you have any eggdrop shell downtimes issues that have to do with foonet, feel free to mention them here.

Okay, forget that I said that I would not recommend Aggressive Hosting. Just a day after I initially posted my shell story here, I got an e-mail from Aggressive Hosting saying that my account there has been restored with whatever data I had there. At this time, that IRCd is working, but the one with LOD Communications is not as I am still waiting on the data restoration there.

[mcdarby]

Ya, it's going to be awhile I assume

FBI info :

http://www.cithosting.com/

Well, last time I checked, it will take to no longer than to February 25th before I have that data on LOD Communications back, but most likely be sooner than that.

[EasyNetwork]

some links about the foonet/CIT issue:
http://www.easynetworknyc.com/foonet/
and
http://www.easynetworknyc.com/foonet/mirror/
both with nice pictures illustrating the facts

Hello, please disregard recommended provider list of VerityNET. I simply made a freindly deal with Owner justin for to get give him ad time on my website for shell account. Then AFTER I got him dozens of clients he simply cut me off claiming his crappy shell had downtime because someone was DDoSing (isn't that what's happening on IRC?) his box because I had few bots on it that were in chanels where my other bots from FDC/EV1/NLAYER networks are and they never got DDoSed. He has Zero filtering and whole box dies when it gets small DDoS attack. So stay away from that company.

[Zulu]

Hello, please disregard recommended provider list of VerityNET. I simply made a freindly deal with Owner justin for to get give him ad time on my website for shell account. Then AFTER I got him dozens of clients he simply cut me off claiming his crappy shell had downtime because someone was DDoSing (isn't that what's happening on IRC?) his box because I had few bots on it that were in chanels where my other bots from FDC/EV1/NLAYER networks are and they never got DDoSed. He has Zero filtering and whole box dies when it gets small DDoS attack. So stay away from that company.

I've only just noticed this post now. Just figured I should post something about it. When you had an account with us, in exchange for advertising, many people were VERY mad at you. As a result we were receiving MANY DDoS floods on a day to day basis. Contrary to what you seem to think, we have extensive DDoS filtering upstream to block a variety of common attacks. However, most of the attacks you were attracting were at legitimate services and as such got passed these rulesets. The machines were suffering bandwidth saturation, as it is simply not possible to push more than 100mbps of data down a 100mbps pipe and were begining to lag excessively (Your largest attack measured 400mbps ). As such, we eventually removed your account and the attacks stopped. Our IRCd machine is currently looking at an uptime of 92 days since the last hardware upgrade and I've personally had a BitchX client on efnet for three weeks and counting (after moving from blessed over to easynews, blessed seems to get rebooted often).

[awyeah]

Nice one. Almost 50% or more shell providers were affected in Feb 2004 because of foonet and most have switched hosts, as the FBI pwned them badly.

[EasyNetwork]

Hello, please disregard recommended provider list of VerityNET. I simply made a freindly deal with Owner justin for to get give him ad time on my website for shell account. Then AFTER I got him dozens of clients he simply cut me off claiming his crappy shell had downtime because someone was DDoSing (isn't that what's happening on IRC?) his box because I had few bots on it that were in chanels where my other bots from FDC/EV1/NLAYER networks are and they never got DDoSed. He has Zero filtering and whole box dies when it gets small DDoS attack. So stay away from that company.

I've only just noticed this post now. Just figured I should post something about it. When you had an account with us, in exchange for advertising, many people were VERY mad at you. As a result we were receiving MANY DDoS floods on a day to day basis. Contrary to what you seem to think, we have extensive DDoS filtering upstream to block a variety of common attacks. However, most of the attacks you were attracting were at legitimate services and as such got passed these rulesets. The machines were suffering bandwidth saturation, as it is simply not possible to push more than 100mbps of data down a 100mbps pipe and were begining to lag excessively (Your largest attack measured 400mbps ). As such, we eventually removed your account and the attacks stopped. Our IRCd machine is currently looking at an uptime of 92 days since the last hardware upgrade and I've personally had a BitchX client on efnet for three weeks and counting (after moving from blessed over to easynews, blessed seems to get rebooted often).

What? Total bullshit.

You gave us shell account witch we used to run 4 bots in private channels, your crappy server was unstable and went down around four times you were hosted at calpop on 99$ celeron box.

I was on bnc located @ oxygen shell server and joined your channel complained, your kiddie admin said : "Maybe you ddosing server?". I replied sarcastically "Uh yeah". Your idiot admin started asking stupid questions like 'Why, stop', he was put on ignore. Then I was banned by same idiot.

You came in and suspended my account for 'ddos' I caused. While no one knew I had account with you in first place nor was attack coming to ips I used on my bots.

This is example of clueless server administration.

1.) Buy cheap server.
2.) Offer shells.
3.) Get ddosed.
4.) Blame it on someone instead of getting a clue.


'As such, we eventually removed your account and the attacks stopped. '

Your calpop server kept going down for DAYS after that because as you stated router kept 'resetting'? You finally started adding netranges to router at CalPop and filtered most of attack off in a week

Good with your company, I hope you learned basic linux skills and got some real staff not some 14 year olds who do free support for free shell account and make sure you remember who helped you get where you are at now.

[Zulu]

What? Total bullshit.

You gave us shell account witch we used to run 4 bots in private channels, your crappy server was unstable and went down around four times you were hosted at calpop on 99$ celeron box.

Oh the emotional EasyNetwork goes on a rant when he doesn't know what he's talking about.

No shell services were ever anywhere near CalPOP when you had an account. The machine at calpop was a 2.6GHz p4 w/ 2GB of RAM that was setup specifically for web customers, all mail handling, and database work.

I was on bnc located @ oxygen shell server and joined your channel complained, your kiddie admin said : "Maybe you ddosing server?". I replied sarcastically "Uh yeah". Your idiot admin started asking stupid questions like 'Why, stop', he was put on ignore. Then I was banned by same idiot.

What?

You came in and suspended my account for 'ddos' I caused. While no one knew I had account with you in first place nor was attack coming to ips I used on my bots.

Yes, we suspended your account for the DDoS attacks you were being hammered with. Nobody liked you around the time of the foonet collapse as you ran around stirring up [censored]. IPFW logs on the actual servers, current router stats at the times of the attack, and trafshow output on the machines all showed YOU being the target. I had many people messaging me about attacks aimed at you for various reasons. We opted to remove you rather than inconveniance our other users with nullrouted vhosts, server lag, and the crowd of script kiddies that seemed to follow you around.

This is example of clueless server administration.

1.) Buy cheap server.
2.) Offer shells.
3.) Get ddosed.
4.) Blame it on someone instead of getting a clue.

If you'd like to question my administration experience I'll glady provide you references to a range of dot-coms all up the west coast of the USA, Canada and Latin America.

'As such, we eventually removed your account and the attacks stopped. '

Your calpop server kept going down for DAYS after that because as you stated router kept 'resetting'? You finally started adding netranges to router at CalPop and filtered most of attack off in a week

Actually yes the CalPOP machine (web mail & db) then came under attack as well resulting in our web machines connectivity being intermittant at best. CalPOP did not have the resources to deal with DDoS activity and as such we also had to move our web machine elsewhere.

Good with your company, I hope you learned basic linux skills and got some real staff not some 14 year olds who do free support for free shell account and make sure you remember who helped you get where you are at now.

a) the machines are not and never have run linux.
b) I was working with linux.com back in '98 - when linux first started to see the spotlight, before every kiddie and his grandmother thought they were elite because they downloaded redhat or mandrake. I don't appreciate insults from moody children who don't have any background to their statements.
c) We have a range of very tallented people that are around to help. If you're talking to general users in the channel and you're offended by what they have to say I'm not concerned by it. We don't need any flakes like yourself.
d) You didn't get us anywhere, don't flatter yourself. We provide a quality service that our users are very happy with, word of mouth got us where we are.

In the future you should try and seperate your ranting emotional self from facts, it makes you seem like a child. I'm not trying to attack you with this comment, just advice.

[caesar]

Why do I have the feeling that this turned in a "fight" betwen Zulu and EasyNetwork?

[Zulu]

Why do I have the feeling that this turned in a "fight" betwen Zulu and EasyNetwork?

It hasn't, I just don't appreciate slanderous comments.