Nekochan Net

I was definitely going through withdrawals

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow. I really, really, really appreciate your dedication!

Just to throw it out there, I have some unused IPs, ample server space, and plenty of bandwidth available - If there's absolutely anything I can do to help you work that number down, I'd be happy to help. Even if it means a Paypal donation button - I'd click it a few times.

My 'withdrawal symptoms' are my problem Personally, I'm grateful for your effort, and very happy with the site the way it is.

I guess the bulk of the costs are for connectivity with a guaranteed bandwidth?

Yeah, the connection I run has a static IP allocation, the ability to run servers (obviously) and guaranteed upstream/downstream. It's basically a business-class SDSL line, but it runs me $250 a month. For many years I used it as my sole connection to the Internet and Nekochan kind of just rode along as a freebie, but nowadays Nekochan is the only thing using that line (I've moved on to faster downstream cable service for general surfing).

I'm using Twitter a little bit here, and it seems handy for some things... but no matter what, and no matter how many times I've posted there, I feel weird each time I tweet something!

I've registered for a twitter account, and played with it some the day I got it; I needed it for an experiment with curl. Since then, I haven't used it for anything. It doesn't seem to have the same appeal to me that facebook does. Maybe if I find all you guys it will give me something to use it for.

@mjwinterink

Okay, it is done!

Oooh ! Oooh ! Uncle Martin and I had to move

Ouch ! And I thought our so-called "service" was overpriced ! We get especially good web filtering, tho

Does your isp snivel about running a low-traffic website on a normal dsl line ? I'd think you could run nekochan on a less expensive service without causing any harm (except to your ISP's pocketbook )

Yeah, most providers block key ports unless you have a business class connection, plus the cheap packages tend to use dynamic IPs. I may look into Comcast's business package sometime though, it sounds pretty good.

And to think I have fiber-to-the-home, with TV, telephone and unrestricted[*] 50Mbit (up and down, soon 100Mbit!) network for 60 or 65EUR/month. A fixed IP was a one time administrative fee of 25EUR ...


[*] Fair use policy, but no port blocks etc. Running your own outgoing SMTP server is still unwise because lots of site blacklist SMTP servers on a residential IP address.

FTTH is pretty common here, too. Residential is $22.50 a month but then, we have certain restrictions Business gets shafted to make up for it, our crappy 512 mbit connection that has been slower than molasses ever since the worst company in the country, China Crapicom, took it over, runs about a hundred $$ a month.

Mr Neko, I notice you do your own DNS. How does that work ? Can you just set up a dns server and the other dns servers will pick you up, or did you have to get integrated into the Greater Internet in some way ? I need to better understand dns, since that's the biggest tool they use to mess us up. I can say with some authority that putting a known-good dns server address in your setup doesn't help, they still manage to poison it. Thanks, Cisco.

During the downtime I was doing some snooping on my own to pinpoint the problem, and it looks like both nameservers are run locally by nekonoko on the webserver. So unless they continually update their list of known DNS servers, I wouldn't think they would catch on and poison it for such a small site.

If he were to switch over to one of the free DNS providers like dns.he.net (which is an amazing service, by the way) then I could imagine that various ISPs/state governments would tinker with the records that you're seeing.

You can set up your own forward DNS pretty easily, but the reverse DNS can be an issue if your ISP doesn't support a fall through to your DNS server (for example, 64.81.247.28 would reverse map to something like dsl081-247-028.sfo1.dsl.speakeasy.net instead of sachiko.nekochan.net).

And as jan-jaap mentioned, most MTAs would block SMTP originating from a residential class line. Business class subnets aren't normally blacklisted as they're expected to provide SMTP traffic.

We could go super-retro and have an IRIX UUCP link. All we'd need to do is find a way to encapsulate it over Skype computer:computer to eliminate phone long-distance charges (with a failover to local telephone calls).

I assume you're going for comedic effect here. There is a defined mechanism for running uucp over TCP, it's probably in your /etc/services file. So in theory we could do it today, though I've never looked at the uucp implementation on IRIX. (I was ...!think!liable!smj for a year or so, using a Sun-3/140 and Telebit Trailblazer.)

It's a neat idea, but the configuration is enough of a bear that most folks need a really good reason to go through that level of pain.

Neko - thanks for everything you do. It is easy to take a site for granted... but then it goes down and you are thinking to yourself 'crap, I should have archived so many of those useful posts' because the first place our mind goes is not to network failure but to hardware failure, lightning strike, tornado, meteor... "When Nekochan went down, I thought I felt the earth rumbling from the explosion... but it was just my stomach getting ill..."

This is the coolest alternative computing enthusiast site out there. Or maybe all others are the alternative and this is the sole remaining mainstream computing site? ;^)

I hope penguin didn't wet his oats this time!

And now, this time without autocorrection:

I hope Pentium didn't wet his pants this time!