The ban came into effect since Sunday after twenty 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 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 it conceded and vowed to
take action against its abusive users, but TMnet failed to respond
adequately.
The Undernet.org explained that it has 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 has yet to respond to CNET
Asia at press time.
(Published in CNET Asia, Sept 07,1999)