- ClueNet
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ClueNet 
Motto We believe that much can be done when intelligent and helpful people all come together in one place.[1] Formation January 21, 2007 Purpose/focus ClueNet strives to filter out the people who have no intent of helping others.[1] Location The Internet CTA Christopher Breneman, Jacobi Carter, Rich Smith Website ClueNet.org ClueNet is an organization of servers across the Internet that are combined to provide free services to users. Such services include an IRC server, mail service, Shell accounts, and various smaller services ran by ClueNet users. ClueNet is focused around the central community of users who believe that much can be done when intelligent and helpful people all come together in one place. Many users[who?] of ClueNet believe that Internet services, including chatrooms, are filled with people that have no intent of helping others, or even have malicious intent. ClueNet states that it strives to filter out these people and attract only the best members for the community.[1]
Contents
ClueIRC
The community is primarily focused around the chatroom component of ClueNet, ClueIRC. ClueIRC is a cluster of public IRC servers with bespoke services. The community is well-rounded and welcomes anyone with good intent[2]. There are many people in the community that are knowledgeable about computer-related topics and would be pleased to help others learn. Intelligence and helpfulness is socially rewarded, while flaming and other immature activity is greatly frowned upon.[1]
Infrastructure
ClueNet uses a cluster of servers at the core for redundancy and security. The primary and secondary clusters host critical services such as Kerberos, LDAP, DNS, VPN control, MySQL and others. These two clusters are configured in a master/slave setup and have access restricted to administrators.
The third cluster is a global VPN which was written by Chris Breneman, and is available under the GPLv3 license.
On top of this infrastructure, server administrators can build and offer various services ranging from shell hosting to web hosting.
Security
Due to the use of Kerberos, user passwords are not sent across the network in plain or encrypted form and tickets have an expiry time, this means if a users ticket is compromised the attack window is greatly reduced. This allows for single sign-on between the servers also reducing the risk of users becoming victim to a Spoofing attack[3]
Along with the security for authentication, there are also ACL-based access to LDAP attributes which allows a user to decide whether or not they wish to display profile information to everyone, a subset of users, or LDAP admins only. This access is also applied to attributed for DNS server information, which allows for total access control.
A few examples of this in effect are as follows:
- For the server attribute only the owner and authorized administrators (as set by the owner) can edit its attributes such as IP addresses and host names
- Users can control who can see their personal information (such as Twitter ID and email address) but are restricted to allowing read only access to prevent them from creating a security risk by allowing another user to write to their details
- Users can be assigned access to a specific DNS or VPN entry allowing them to update ip addresses of entries they own but not modify others entries or tamper with critical entries
Community
Members[which?] of the community are generally involved in open source projects both within and outside ClueNet. There is generally a wild discussion going on with topic ranging from technical questions to general opinion. The object of discussions is not to create a flamewar but to understand another's point of view and introduce them to other points of view.
History
Formation
Chules.net[4] and C&H Services,[5] two free shell account providers, who met when they both used the now-defunct ShellsNet as their official IRC network.
When the administrators of Chules.net and C&H Services became disgruntled with the changes to the environment of ShellsNet, they left but maintained relations. C&H Services joined with EvilHosting's[6] IRC network and became EvilShells. When the IRC network fell apart, C&H Services and Chules.net merged and became ClueNet.
Taking what they had learned they set about creating the right community and infrastructure to meet the ClueNet principle.
Free Gaming Tournament
In September of 2007, ClueNet in partnership with Nuxified.org, hosted a gaming tournament to encourage the growth of open source gaming.[7] Games to be played in the tournament were free and open source games voted upon by the both communities involved.[8]
Services
Services offered by ClueNet vary as server owners and users are free to build their own upon the core infrastructure. Services provided to all users by the ClueNet administrators include IRC and LDAP access.
ClueBot
ClueNet acts as a collaboration area and home to Wikipedia's ClueBot task bots which carry out various tasks on Wikipedia, including archiving old discussion pages and quickly deleting spam and vandalism on Wikipedia. [9]
References
- ^ a b c d Breneman, Christopher (02-14-2010). "ClueNet Overview". ClueWiki. ClueNet.Org. http://cluenet.org/main/wpage.php?section=about&page=ClueNet:Overview. Retrieved 16 December 2010.
- ^ Carter, Jacobi (11-22-2009). "Clueful Chatting". ClueNet. http://cluenet.org/wiki/Clueful_Chatting. Retrieved 27 June 2011.
- ^ "Kerberos: The Network Authentication Protocol". MIT. http://web.mit.edu/kerberos/. Retrieved 27 June 2011.
- ^ Breneman, Christopher (05-21-2007). "Chules.Net Homepage". Chules.net Website. Archive.org. Archived from the original on 21 May 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070521222927/http://secant.chules.net/. Retrieved 16 December 2010.
- ^ Fuller, Hunter (08-13-2006). "C&H Services Homepage". C&H Services Website. Archive.org. Archived from the original on 13 August 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20060813213838/http://services.hackmiester.com/. Retrieved 16 December 2010.
- ^ Evilhosting. "Evilhosting Homepage". Evilhosting Website. Evilhosting.org. http://evilhosting.org/. Retrieved 16 December 2010.
- ^ libervisco (09-11-2007). "Nuxified and Cluenet prepare a gaming tourney. You are invited!". Nuxified Website. Nuxified.org. http://www.nuxified.org/article/nuxified_and_cluenet_prepare_a_gaming_tourney_you_are_invited. Retrieved 16 December 2010.
- ^ free-zombie (08-11-2007). "Which games should be selected for the upcoming tournament?". Nuxified Website. Nuxified.org. http://www.nuxified.org/poll/which_games_should_be_selected_for_the_upcoming_tournament. Retrieved 16 December 2010.
- ^ Carter, Jacobi (7-24-2007). "User:ClueBot". Wikipedia User Page. Wikimedia Foundation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ClueBot. Retrieved 17 December 2010.
External links
Categories:- Internet hosting
- Unix
- Linux
- Internet Relay Chat
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
