Open Stack

James E. Blair wrote:
> Freenode has been having a rough time lately due to a series of DDoS
> attacks which have been increasingly disruptive to collaboration.
> Fortunately there's an alternative.
> 
> OFTC <URL:http://www.oftc.net/> is a robust and established alternative
> to Freenode.  It is a smaller network whose mission statement makes it a
> less attractive target.  It's significantly more stable than Freenode
> and has friendly and responsive operators.  The infrastructure team has
> been exploring this area and we think OpenStack should move to using
> OFTC.

There is quite a bit of literature out there pointing to Freenode, like
presentation slides from old conferences. We should expect people to
continue to join Freenode's channels forever. I don't think staying a
few weeks on those channels to redirect misled people will be nearly
enough. Could we have a longer plan ? Like advertisement bots that would
advise every n hours to join the right servers ?

> [...]
> 1) Create an irc.openstack.org CNAME record that points to
> chat.freenode.net.  Update instructions to suggest users configure their
> clients to use that alias.

I'm not sure that helps. The people who would get (and react to) the DNS
announcement are likely using proxies anyway, which you'll have to
unplug manually from Freenode on switch day. The vast majority of users
will just miss the announcement. So I'd rather just make a lot of noise
on switch day :)

Finally, I second Sean's question on OFTC's stability. As bad as
Freenode is hit by DoS, they have experience handling this, mitigation
procedures in place, sponsors lined up to help, so damage ends up
*relatively* limited. If OFTC raises profile and becomes a target, are
we confident they would mitigate DoS as well as Freenode does ? Or would
they just disappear from the map completely ? I fear that we are trading
a known evil for some unknown here.

In all cases I would target post-release for the transition, maybe even
post-Summit.

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)