Linking Guidelines

Thank you for your interest in contributing to DareNET!

We appreciate that you're willing to contribute your resources towards helping DareNET thrive and grow. It's important that you understand DareNET is not your conventional IRC network. Servers are maintained by our Infrastructure team, and most configuration and other maintenance is done via automated tools from a central location.

In  general, we will only provide an O-line for you, the server administrator. We also guarantee no minimum level of access or privilege, and the utility of a server is dependent on latency and other factors which may be out of our control.

Regardless, hosting a server for DareNET helps the network and we greatly appreciate that you're considering it.

System specifications

Required	Desired
Linux 4.4+ or FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE+	Ubuntu LTS or Debian stable.
Pentium4 or better	64-bit multi-core
1GB	2GB or more

Connectivity requirements

The server must be on a dedicated line, preferably on a multi-homed network in order to ensure high availability and low latency. We cannot and will not accept servers running on a broadband or dial-up connection.

System configuration

We prefer dedicated machines; however, we will consider different set-ups. All servers must adequately address any and all security concerns and be sufficient to properly run ircd. We will require:

• Account access. The irc daemon (ircd-darenet) runs as a user program under a vanilla end-user account, with no setuid or special privilege. We require that our Infrastructure team have access to this account and root/sudo access. Preferably, password logins should be disabled and authentication done via SSH keys.

Other requirements

Your hosting provider must allow IRC traffic on their network. Specifically, the running of IRC servers connected to public IRC networks. We will verify this when we review your application.

We expect our server administrators to:

• always ensure that our Infrastructure team has up-to-date contact information, on and offline;
• stay subscribed to the admins mailing list (low-traffic, announcements only);
• endeavour to give our Infrastructure team ample advance warning about any network, hardware or software upgrades and maintenance which may affect DareNET;
• and communicate unexpected downtown and maintenance ASAP.

Applying

Before applying, you may find it helpful to speak with a member of our Infrastructure team in #infrastructure and read about our testlink process here. Regardless, the formal application process begins once you have submitted an email containing the following information to infrastructure at darenet.org. Please include all information in the body of the email, no attachements. Incomplete applications will not be considered.

• DareNET account name. If you do not have an account, you'll need to register one first.
• Contact information. Include your full name, email address and a telephone number you can be reached at. List the best times to contact you, including timezones.
• Geographical location of server. City, principality and country where the server is physically located.
• IP address. This will allow us to perform latency and route checking.
• Hosting provider. Where is this machine hosted? What is your arrangement with this provider (i.e., co-located, sponsored, etc.)?
• Hardware, software, bandwidth and hosting. Describe the system you are offering to host. Provide as much information as possible, including routing details, other services running on the machine, etc.
• dmesg output -- Paste full dmesg output.
• Free Answer. Please explain why you'd like to link to DareNET, and what, if anything, you wish to get back from doing so.

Our Infrastructure team tries to respond to all application requests within seven days. Application requests submitted around major holidays  (e.g., Christmas/Yule/Hannukah, New Years, etc.) may take longer to receive a response, as the Infrastructure team is in recess during major holiday periods.