Malaysia's TMnet users permanently banned
By Julian Matthews
Tuesday, September 07 1999

SINGAPORE--The Undernet.org has permanently banned users of local Internet Service Provider TMnet from accessing the popular global chat network.

The ban came into effect Sunday after 20 administrators unanimously voted for the ban with three abstentions and none against.

"Due to the lack of communication or cooperation from TMnet, the administration of the Undernet regretfully will no longer allow connection to or use of the Undernet from its customers," said Undernet in a statement posted Sunday.

All Malaysian users were conditionally banned on August 15 after overwhelming and escalating abuse from users originating from the .my domain, and the lack of response to complaints from the two local ISPs, Jaring and TMnet.

The abuse ranged from flooding channels or chat rooms with multiple messages to denial of service attacks that were draining the chat network's resources.

The ban on Jaring users was lifted after Jaring conceded and vowed to take action against its abusive users. However, TMnet failed to respond adequately.

The Undernet.org explained that it had not received any contact from TMnet since Aug 23.

"All (earlier) mails received from TMnet were unsigned--there was no identification, verification, title or positions given for those sending the emails. No phone numbers or physical address to aid identification were supplied," said the statement, which timelined the sequence of correspondence which led to the banning.

Despite this, the Undernet.org said it entered into correspondence with the individual claiming to represent TMnet "in good faith" to resolve the situation.

TMnet also offered to host a local Undernet server as a means to monitor and curb the abuse. But this was rejected because the Undernet claimed the ISP did not have the bandwidth or machine resources to meet its minimum requirements.

TMnet had previously made a similar offer to DALnet, another popular chat network, after Malaysian users were also repeatedly being banned, or in chat parlance, k-lined, for various abuses on that network.

Subsequently a local DALnet server was set up called coins.dal.net which local users can access.

The independently-run Undernet services an average of 30,000 chatters at any one time and about 200,000 users daily. It is one of the largest chat networks with some 41 servers worldwide.

TMnet has about 350,000 subscribers. It had yet to respond to CNET Asia at press time.