Our two new test links, pacific.or.us.synirc.net and twilight.de.eu.synirc.net have become full links.

Following network issues, Aden has delinked downtown.tx.us.synirc.net and will be applying for a replacement system within the next couple days.

atlantis.tx.us.synirc.net has been accepted as a full link. Congratulations!

We have also accepted two new test links:

• pacific.or.us.synirc.net based in Oregon, USA, provided by slushey.
• twilight.de.eu.synirc.net based in Germany, provided by schadowfox.

As part of our continuing efforts to improve service in North America and to replace delinked servers, we have accepted atlantis.tx.us.synirc.net as a test link, donated by noob and co-admin Danny. This server is located in Texas, USA.

Our webserver will undergo maintenance on Sunday, 09 September 2012 around 11 am EDT to improve website and webchat performance during peak usage times.

The server will be offline for about fifteen to twenty minutes. During this time, the synIRC website, forums, and webchat will be unavailable. No IRC servers will be affected. Network services will also not be affected.

Update: Due to circumstances beyond our control, this has been postponed to Sunday.

News for the past two months:

• abyss.jp.as.synirc.net was not accepted as a full link.
• madara.ca.us.synirc.net was delinked by the admin before the test link process completed.
• logik.nj.us.synirc.net has delinked. Its admin, darkex has become co-admin of nightmare.uk.eu.synirc.net.

Within the next week, our US hub will be moving to new hardware. Network services will be moved to the secondary hub while the move is going on to keep outages to a minimum.

Somehow the last six months of news did not make it onto the site. First, the older news:

• logik.nj.us.synirc.net was accepted as a full link.
• swordfish.mo.us.synirc.net delinked.
• Our main European hub was replaced with a shinier model.

The most recent news is that we have accepted two new test links:

• abyss.jp.as.synirc.net donated by oagh, our first Asian server.
• madara.ca.us.synirc.net donated by Webtricity.

This morning, most of our users were banned from the network. This was the result of my error and I am truly sorry.

I had added a spamfilter to the network to try to block a swarm of bots that were joining the network. Since the first filter did not work, I removed it and added a second one. This occurred at 9:11am EST. Promptly, most of our users were removed from the network with the message "Spambots not wanted". This also affected most of our network staff.

Visitors to the website and our forums trying to find out what happened brought the webserver to its knees. Unfortunately, with the webserver unresponsive, most of our server admins were not able to rehash their servers and add exemptions for themselves so they could work on correcting the issue.

Thanks to network staff, the issue was resolved completely by 10:22am EST.

This incident highlighted several different things:

• Sometimes we all make mistakes.
• Server admins should be exempted from spam filters so they can quickly address any issues with filters that arise.
• Servers should not be dependent on the webserver to rebuld their configurations.
• The webserver needs better hardware to handle an onslaught of visitors.

We are currently working on how to approach the technical issues.

I am going to take steps to make sure I do not repeat this. For starters, I am going to avoid doing anything with the spam filters until I have a reliable mechanism for testing them first.

Again, I'm truly sorry this happened. Please accept my apologies.

As part of our continuing efforts to improve service in North America, we have accepted logik.nj.us.synirc.net as a test link, donated by darkex. This server is located in New Jersey, USA.

The French provider for hades.fr.eu.synirc.net shut down without notice. Aden has moved the server to another provider in Germany and the new hades.de.eu.synirc.net is undergoing the test link process.

We will be updating the software running on our North American hubs in the next two weeks to hopefully address an issue where some client servers are becoming desynchronized with the rest of the network.

Our secondary North America hub will be upgraded this coming weekend on Saturday, 24 September. The hub will only be offline for a few minutes and should have minimal impact.

Our primary North America hub will then be upgraded the next weekend on Saturday, 01 October. We will try to move servers off that hub ahead of time so there will be smaller splits throughout the week rather than one huge split as the hub goes down.