A Legacy in IRC and the Death of Dalnet

Recent developments at Dalnet have signaled what most agree is the beginning of the end.

While this may delight some, The Sceptic’s Tank greets the slow and painful demise of Dalnet with sadness. We, as most recall, formed there many years ago.

Most casual users of the internet remember only a saturated version that took baby steps with Compuserve, Prodigy, and then some weird thing call AOL. Our membership was crawling out of the primordial ooze of the net back in the days of the BBS systems. Marc Springwell was around in 1988 when Jarkko Oikarinen created it in Finland, attempting to replace MUT (MultiUser Talk) on their BBS. By 1990 things were growing, and in 1994 a bunch of Efnet Star Trek dorks formed Dalnet.

Khaled changed things with mIRC. By 1995 a lot of us were scripting, and mIRC opened up flood gates for users who might not have otherwise shown interest. The Sceptic’s Tank was already in its infancy, though we had not formed. But The Twelve were there in 1996 as hired guns, watching the scroll for trouble. Over the years we grew and evolved. By 2000 we had our own network. We were still chilling in other parts of the underbelly of the internet, keeping in touch. We were still building scripts, tearing code, designing. From that core group came what we are today. 

It started on Dalnet, which has always been the dog everyone likes to kick. It’s hard to argue that the network has become nearly unusable due to the failure to change as they grew. They were the first to offer WallOps and K:Lines… the latter probably fairly identified as the poison in the cup. Mass bannings are crippling the network, and the sad thing is it really comes down to lazy Ops and management.

Whatever the issues there, this group will not participate in the slinging of stones. Marc Springwell, Tom Livingston, Chrissy Olinger, Seth Harris, Tiny McKay, Terry Justin… if you use web search your algorithms were born there. Technology for tracing IP strings effectively was born there. Ironically, abuse of KILL/AKILL is shutting out so many ISPs, this very problem is the strangle hold killing the network. It’s true that bad server connections are the reason for a huge part of the mass exodus, but it began with mass K:Line bans, and seems to have resulted in mass lethargy.

Recently Tank IRC ventured into gaming. The popularity of Corvania Chronicles resulted in expansion, and this month Corvania got a shiny new home under the umbrella of Tank Net, individual servers for power and speed. A large flurry of requests came soaring over the wall, and most of them were old friends from Dalnet.

We’d love to be able to host the lost, but we have stayed strong, stable, and private since 2000. The Tank’s privately owned and occupied home on IRC was born on New Year’s Eve, 2001. We’ve never been shut down unless we were doing our own reboots. We’ve never been victims to exploits, slams, or wars. Not so much as a bump in the road. Being members-only is why.

That doesn’t mean we can’t relate to the sorrow many feel as Dalnet appears to take its final breaths. The BBW channels there gave us two relationships that are still going strong. Friendships, marriages, and even babies have come of those early connections. The Tank would not exist if The Twelve had not been there in the early days. We wish them well, however the current issues play out.