Comments on searchirc forum?

mic · none Joined: 10 May 2003 Posts: 7

Maybe a comments forum, for feedback, and for fan messages like (this is mine):

I like SearchIRC, its quite nice, and it's cuter than netsplit.de. It also allows viewers to comment on things through the forum, and add extra channel information, unlike netsplit.

Jason · Posted: May 10, 2003 4:50pm Post subject:

Hi Mic,

thanks for the compliments Smile

I've updated the name of this section to "Suggestions / Comments", so feel free to post any comments you want here.

I'm glad you like the layout of SearchIRC. It's going to be a lot more than a pretty face though -- the Search is the most comprehensive around, and we're now up to indexing over 500 live IRC networks. While the network listings are still being added to, the index robots are picking up and storing MOTD's, and other network information. I think I have around 3 megs worth of MOTDs stored already since yesterday when I started collecting them.

Lots more to come! Stay tuned.

mic · none Joined: 10 May 2003 Posts: 7

I do notice that the SearchIRC bot took a little longer than the netsplit bot to do it's thing. Is this because it does a little more, or does netsplit have a faster link?

Jason · Posted: May 14, 2003 6:40am Post subject:

Hi Mic,

I'm assuming that when you say "do it's thing", you mean the length of time the robot stays connected to a network.

If that is what you meant, here are some reasons:

1) My index robot does not download data at full speed. It has built in delays so that a robot can never use up much more than ~2% cpu. With that said, the delays are not so slow that the robot would excess flood because of the client queue being filled up.

2) The index robot does /links and stores that data. This data is also parsed and it checks it against it's internal list of MOTDs. If it finds any missing server MOTDs, it will try to gather it. I limit the robot to 3 motds per session, so it never tries to gather all network info in one go.

In most network cases, the connection only takes a few seconds.

Also, keep in mind there are several network types defined for the robot. For some networks, the robot will remain online sitting idle until the next time it should /list, instead of disconnecting once done (there are not many networks setup with this though). Other networks are setup to be indexed every hour. Most small networks are setup to be indexed every three hours -- as they seldom change significantly enough to be indexed repeatedly. Another reason for the smaller networks to be indexed no more than every three hours, is because smaller networks tend to watch their user connections very closely. A robot connecting repeatedly will ring alarms and may get the robot a kline. I've designed the process so as to best not cause problems with anyone.

One problem I'm finding though, is some operators on the networks are mistaking my index robot with "bottler" or "xdcc robots". *sigh*. Anyway, my About page (http://searchirc.com/about.php) addresses this issue.

Also, about network speed, SearchIRC is located in a datacenter in Palo Alto ... the same building that Sega, Macromedia, TechTV, and others are located. My uplink has:

UUNet (Gigabit fiber ring)
Level 3 (Gigabit fiber ring)
WilTel (Gigabit fiber ring)
ISP.net (D-3 fiber for peering)
PAIX (Gigabit fiber ring)

So bandwidth isn't even close to being an issue.