kirenet, falcon, other shells

[rmm]

kirenet - be careful of kirenet. I've seen a few users here say that they like kirenet, but I have had enough problems with them to give up and cancel my 9-process account with them. The uptimes of the servers that I used (blazer, echo, avalon) sucked when compared to the other shells I am presently using (lod, straynet, sparkhost, ltnx). In fact, they were worse than my other four shells combined. Plus their customer service at efnet was very poor (almost never online). The final straw was when they transfered my blazer and echo accounts to phantom and viper. One account wouldn't take my password and the other account told me "no such file/directory" when I typed ./eggdrop. When I complained about this in an email, their reply was that "nothing is wrong". lol

falcon-networks - I've seen this shell mentioned here as having a good uptime and indeed they were one of best I had. But one day I saw some bots from there flood a fellow server helper which resulted in a zline of that IP range (which also killed my falcon bots). I was able to get the zline lifted, but when I explained this to falcon admin T0r0, he gave me some lame answer about spoofed addies, and that the usernames in the logs did not match any account name and therefore the flood bots did not come from falcon. I'm like HELLO, you aren't aware that usernames are not locked in? I tested this with my falcon bots...unlike some other shells I have had, I could make the bot username (nick!username@host.com) anything I wanted. I was so disgusted with his answer that I canceled my account there. I won't run my bots from a shell that only gives lip service to their abuse policy. You can be very sure that the next time I see falcon zlined, I'll not ask for its removal. And btw, the last time I looked into the lamer channel that the flood came from, there was still a falcon bot there (irc.icq.com, #hackarmy). This was a few months back though.

ltnx - great uptime, but be careful. The admin there is qbix(sp?) and he used to be admin of omnicon. ...Hey quenton, you STILL owe me two weeks service from when omnicon disappeared...

And as for other shells, here are some tips for newbie botmasters that I have learned the hard way ( hardway = ~19 shells since 12/99)...

1) Shop carefully for shells. Only choose shells that have been around awhile and are mentioned in reputable shell reviews or forums like here. And be prepared to jump from shell to shell in your search to find mr_right.com (lol). All their websites say they are great, but you'll find out that such is not the case. You'll also find many that have great COMPUTER uptimes, but your BOT uptime will suck due to the shell's crappy/overloaded internet connection. The only way to know which shell is right for you is to try it. And since the shell world in general changes all the time, EXPECT that the great shell of today may be your crappiest shell tomorrow.

2) Always try to put a level of financial security between you and a shell, like PayPal or some such. I remember a run-in with i-shells (also known as ghostweb, webcove, etc.) awhile back. They continued to charge my Visa account 3 months after I canceled them. I had to get Visa security to get on their ass to get a refund.

3) Try to use a free throwaway email account when signing up, in case the shell is super lame and sells email addies to spammers. To be honest though, I have never encountered this problem. Most shell providers hate spammers with a passion.

4) Be wary about signing up for a long term account (like 6 month, 12 month, etc) and don't even get a 3 month until you have tried the shell for a month or so, cause if they turn out to be crappy then you are stuck until your account expires. I remember when I got screwed by digital-web.net . They were my very first shell and after I used them for a few months, I bought a 1 year signup for a 4 process account. Then about 7 months into it, the admin changed it to a 2 process account with no credit, no refund, nothing. He did this to all 4-process accounts and canceled anyone who complained too much. How lame was that? Fortunately, the bastard went out of business soon after and his stuff was aquired by lod.com. Lod very generously gave credit for some of this even though it was not their fault. Kudos and thanks to todd @ lod.com.

5) Don't use pine ( an internal *nix email program) to send email to the admins. I have had several say that its not "hooked up" or something, even though the program does install into your account (don't ask me how/why, I'm not a shell guru). I recall lasawhile back when I canceled a mavnet account I had (canceled due to personal reasons, nothing to do with mavnet, they were a great shell). About 8 months later (lol, EIGHT MONTHS) I got an honest-to-god PAPER letter from them, saying they were starting collections on me due to non-payment. I had canceled with a pine email and they never got it. Needless to say, I didn't pay. Its not my fault they didn't use their own built-in email programs, and when I cancel a shell I always shutdown everything and clean out the directory so I was not using their resources. I think falcon ate mavnet anyways....

6) Don't expect shell admins to babysit you. I know that *nix and eggdrops are very daunting to use at first, especially for windows users (like me). Eggdrop is a complex program and there is a very steep learning curve and its a "new world". But you choose to enter that world and so its your responsibility to learn what you need know to competently run bots. No one expects you to become a *nix expert, but there is no excuse for going to the admin and saying that "my bots don't work" (cause you uploaded eggdrop and expected it to run right away without making/compiling. lol). There are plenty of help places to teach you, including some here in egghelp.org. Go there and READ and then read some MORE.

7) Don't be begging for free shell accounts. It makes you look lame, and besides, you can get a 1 bot account for like $6/month. If you can't earn $6 in a whole month then you are spending way to much time sitting in chat rooms. Get off your ass and go mow somebodies lawn.

Umm...thats all I can think of for now. Happy botting. 8-)

[GTM]

Regarding Kirenet it really is a matter of which server your shell is on, been using it for years and I have no complaints.

[mopar]

I'm also an Kirenet customer, and I have been on Avalon and I had 130+ days uptime just a while back, then another server had a disc crash and it ended up making them reboot a few of the other servers aswell.
This last month it haven't been all that great, avalon is no more my account is moved to Stealth instead.
So this last mont it has been a few problems, but far from as bad as you describe it.

What annoys me a bit though is that they used to have really good service in the #kirenet on EFnet but nowdays you need to have a bunch of luck to actully have an admins attention in there.

Apart from that I wouldn't say that ppl shouldn't use Kirenet, they are good.

/mopar

[Clipped]

I have shopped around also and I settled on Lomag and Risingnet...

The most reliable shell provider I have found as of yet...Although they cost a little more(not much) they are stable...

Risingnet has also been very good...although I have not been with them as long as Lomag..Time will tell


#7 is good..lol


Clipped

[qubix]

rmm- There's nothing to watch out for with LTNX. I am "qubix" aka "Quentin". Omnicon and LTNX have nothing in common what-so-ever. They are two different companies.

As far as your two weeks, if you email me at qc@ltnx.com, I will add you to LTNX or credit you for two weeks of service if you are a current customer.

As far as LTNX, our uptime is great, infact we are heading on up to 120 of box uptime, and one month of online time. Not to mention we have an EFnet server <.5ms away from the box. With this said, it's doubtful any of our current customers are complaining about anything.

Thanks,

[rmm]

qubix:
[quote] Omnicon and LTNX have nothing in common what-so-ever. [/quote]
Of course they do. YOU. 8-)

But I thank you for your offer. And yes ltnx has great uptime...I mentioned that twice. And the customer support was good too, btw.

mopar:
Seems like you were having the same problems with kirenet that I was. But you probably had a good past history with them and so could overlook that crappy month they had. I, on the otherhand, was a new kirenet user and saw three different kirenet computers with lousy uptimes and lousier support. What else was I to think except "cancel"?

GTM:
I'm glad you have no complaints. I wish I could have said the same, cause having 9 bots for only $28, spread over three computers, was something I really wanted.

[mopar]

rmm,

I hear you man, anyway their problem seems to be over now and I'm starting to build uptime once again, some 14-15days now without any signs of problems, even made it through the massive power outtages the other week

So I'm hoping it will be back to it's normal standard soon with real good uptime and stability.

/mopar

[SimonB]

You suggested that one should be careful of ordering a shell at LTNX.
I must disagree with you. I am a relatively new customer there (4 months)
but I have not had any problems with their service. About two months ago
I had to change my credit card info on LTNX and on Falcon-networks.
LTNX answered my mail straight away and I was able to update my info.

3 mails, msg'ing the admin on two separate occasions, the people at Falcon
has still not replied to me. Perhaps they dont want my money?

Simon

[awyeah]

I agree with rmm for Kirenet.

I have had lots of problems.

- Their uptime sucks.
- Their support sucks.
- Their prices are damn sky high, and services are not upto standard.
- They kill my proccess just cause my eggies have 300kb+ tcls and it ate alot of their cpu usage.

You suck Erik!

[rabb1d]

I agree with rmm for Kirenet.

I have had lots of problems.

- Their uptime sucks.
- Their support sucks.
- Their prices are damn sky high, and services are not upto standard.
- They kill my proccess just cause my eggies have 300kb+ tcls and it ate alot of their cpu usage.

You suck Erik!

Is this the same guy that was recomending kire like 3 weeks ago ?
You flip flop more than John Kerry and George "dubya" combined.
You should run for president of the ussa, you might fit in this election!

[awyeah]

Bleh?

What are you talking about.
You should consider reading posts thoroughly, before giving comments.

(P.S: Thats why I don't post/see this shell section, its nothing but useless, people always argue all the time)

[rabb1d]

Bleh?

What are you talking about.
You should consider reading posts thoroughly, before giving comments.

(P.S: Thats why I don't post/see this shell section, its nothing but useless, people always argue all the time)

I did read it thorughly do I need to quote your post from another thread?
You say in this thread kire is not good, yet in a newer thread you made a post saying they were good.

first you say:

I agree with rmm for Kirenet.

I have had lots of problems.

- Their uptime sucks.
- Their support sucks.
- Their prices are damn sky high, and services are not upto standard.
- They kill my proccess just cause my eggies have 300kb+ tcls and it ate alot of their cpu usage.

You suck Erik!

Then you say:

Here are the top #5. Listed with respect to their positions.

1. Kirenet
2. Lomag
3. Unixrules
4. Risingnet
5. Jeah

Why recomend a company you say in previous posts is not good ?

[Alchera]

(P.S: Thats why I don't post/see this shell section, its nothing but useless, people always argue all the time)

Ummm?

[rabb1d]

alchera thats what I said after reading his flip flop
I was like Ummmmm ok

one minute he says kire sucks next minute hes riding thier bird.

I wonder what changed. Kire hire him? Give him free shells to get someone to post nicely about them. That kind of stuff does happen.


I guess Im useless because I painted him a fool.

[slennox]

Give it a rest.