That's a different IP than the Mud Bytes crawler actually, and this was going on last night and this morning. This is a different instance than when the MB thing was crawling every 2 minutes… this was crawling every single minute for about 6 hours straight. But I think it's a good example of why some of us might have issue with a crawler connecting a lot :)



That's not what I'm doing. I'm trying to clarify if my understanding of it is correct. That's also why I included the "Eventually, you'll be able to opt out with your listing" which is my understanding of the way it may be implemented in the future. Also, incase the wording wasn't clear with what I meant, I meant "with your listing" as "You will have a check box to opt out of MSSP but maintain your listing". I'm not trying to argue, I'm just trying to see if my understanding of what the policy is now and might be in the future is correct.


I don't think it needs to ping 30 minutes if it's just testing connections.

I agree, but I'm not sure that's where the crawler here is headed, and I hope for some clarification.


Well, sort of. MSSP isn't just about tracking player trends. It's about getting automatically updated listing information. Having frequently updated player information is nice, but it's not the main point.

I'm under the impression its a non negotiable part of the crawler. Hopefully an Admin will be by soon to clear up any possible misconceptions :)

Because it makes your log messy, amiright?

That is because Runter did not take offense to anything you said in a discussion on this forum, at least not yet. Give it time.

Because it's a Denial of Service attack, albeit a rather weak one.

I run a MUD for the purpose of giving players a chance to enjoy it. I do NOT run a MUD for the purpose of having various crawlers gather statistics about it. I gather my own statistics, and would happily provide them in a manner of my own choosing.

This is one of the core reasons I spoke out against the telnet option version of this protocol, back when it was still being conceptualized. It is wasteful, since a crawler will be getting 95% identical data every single time it crawls the same MUD. Since it offers point-in-time player data (as opposed to averaged-over-time), it encourages those sites that want to gather statistics to come back often, getting those same 95% unchanged fields every time.

Additionally, the protocol puts ALL of the control in the hands of the crawlers. Since they are the ones initiating the contact, and since it's on the same port the players use, the MUD administrator has no control over their actions. Removing it from the logs doesn't make it go away. If it were on a seperate port, they could choose to disable it at certain times, or set up firewall rules to block more than N connections from the same address before the game server has to handle it. The plain-text version does, at least, allow the administrator to disable the MSSP pseudo-account if they want, although the connection attempt will still be made, and still tie up resources.

Scandum's proposed solution is about the best we can reasonably hope for. Like robots.txt, an annoying crwaler operator can ignore it if they choose to do so, but at least one can hope most crawler operators can be persuaded by peer pressure to be well behaved.

Pinging an IP once a minute, or once every 2 minutes is not a DoS attack. Not even a weak one.

If someone wants to try to "alert the authorities" I welcome it. This is the internet and this server is publicly available. The entire issue is a few people upset because their logs are out of order. There is no "denial of service."

Frankly, I don't care what your goals are. If I want to gather statistics about your mud with a ping every now and then I will. If you don't like it then block the IP and fix your logs. Regardless, no sane person could consider this a DoS.

There is a difference between a DDoS and a DoS.

A DoS usually includes:
* attempts to disrupt connections between two machines, thereby preventing access to a service
* attempts to disrupt service to a specific system or person
* consumption of scarce, limited, or non-renewable resources

Since you are targeting specific services, disrupting communications between users and the service (some MUDs have a limited number of login connections at one time) and using limited resources (CPU, bandwith and hard drive quotas), you are knowingly committing a DoS. I am just rather surprised that after you admitted to doing so because of a thread at this forum that the administrators here have taken no action against you.

Can we maybe try to keep this focused on the technical issues please. :wink: Let's leave our accusations and requests for banning to appropriate channels.

What I think you need to do is call the police. Since you think that getting pinged every few minutes is causing *any* of those bulleted items. The only convoluted argument you can have for it is you are having more trouble reading your logs (that you generate and determine how they are generated and formated.)

This entire post is an epic fail.

Rofl, exactly. Also it might cause a denial of service.

This is essentially an argument against connecting to your mud port for
any reason at all that is not to your satisfaction.

If the waste of a single cpu cycle in the service of an info request qualifies
for you as a for-real dos, I don't know how your lawyer has a single free
moment. Do you sue people who log in and just idle?

Your argument's logical conclusion is that MSSP must be stopped. I do not subscribe
to this point of view.

I do agree with a frequency variable in the spec.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

There is a difference between "pinging" an IP (sending one ICMP packet) and making a full TCP connection to download a bunch of data you just downloaded 2 minutes ago, with one integer having possibly changed (the player count).



You sound like a child of the 90's… maybe if ISP's move back to a pay-per-packet model, you'll change your tune. Your argument is much like it being OK to spit on the sidewalk because it's a public surface and you saw someone else do it.



I'm rather curious where this attitude of ownership comes from. You seem to think the internet belongs to you, and thus common courtesy has no place in it. As I said, if you took the time to breathe, *I* have no issues with logs, and could certainly block the IP of someone being a jerk. I was pointing out that blocking the IP doesn't prevent the connection attempts, and thus it STILL costs you resources, however small.

Again, there's a difference between random port scans once in a while, and a fixed internet resource consistently sending traffic at you for no good reason. I could see it being useful to collect data every hour. I could even see it being useful every 15 minutes if it was a busy MUD that actually had changing data. Every 2 minutes is stupid and wasteful.

I'm also amazed that you are suggesting that "fixing the logs" is a good solution. That's just like "fixing" the problem of your car being low on oil by disconnecting the oil light.

I still think MSSP is a good idea. I just think it should place more control in the hands of the people it's supposed to be helping, namely the ones who are running the MUD servers. In retrospect, it might have been wiser to turn it upside down and let the muds themselves discover the crawlers and send their data to them at their leisure, since a crawler site probably has a better connection than any individual MUD. At least I'd hope so…

Scandum's suggested approach sounds like a very good way to implement an availability checker + mssp crawler.

Then to those going on about DOS attacks…

You list a service in a public list, being the mudlist of mudbytes.
As a consequence, you will get stuff connecting to your advertised service for a variety of reasons, such as checking if that service is available.
Calling that a DOS is absurd, if you don't want it, then your first step would be to stop advertising your service publicly. Sure, there is a point where being hammered by connection attempts will constitute a real DOS attack, but if a connection a minute does that your application is not ready for being deployed on the internet and advertised publicly.

Beyond that, this posting frequency would make one think you people are discussing religion or politics or such, not something technical.

And as an aside, my mud definitely has more bandwidth then most listing sites :P

You made the jump to this being a DoS. Which is absurd. DoS is by necessity. Not choice. By this argument any player with a bad connection that attempts to reconnect every few minutes should have fear of legal action. Not because of the connection itself, but because of the admin not liking the way it formats his logs: That was what this was all about to begin with.

You and Mabus should get in on a class action suite against me, but this is nonsense and I won't waste my time, or anyone else's, continuing the discussion.

Considering that I consider my logs to be an internet service, and needless and purposeful connecting for the sake of annoying me is an effort to prevent that service from functioning efficiently (because in order for it to be efficient, I should be able to look through it for pertinent information) I think your behavior, due to its clearly stated intentions, could be argued to be a DoS.

A player with a bad connection isn't intending to spam someone's MUD or otherwise interrupt, annoy, harm, or harass the MUD or specifically the Administration of the game. You, on the other, purposefully setting up a crawler to ping the games of people that have specifically expressed displeasure at such a tactic is not only incredibly childish and immature, it is an attempt at a malicious attack in order to prove a point on an internet forum. Your arguments justifying your behavior by relating them to other crawlers or players with a bad connection is preposterous, because you had specific malicious intent in your actions. The frequency of the pings shouldn't really be that much of an issue… if I send your email box an email 1 minute apart for 6 hours, I'm sure you'd consider that spam and highly annoying as if your filter didn't catch them, it would greatly interfere with the intended purpose of that service with you having through sort through a bunch of junk.


But it was fine wasting your setting this up to harass us? Did you honestly think you would do this and there wouldn't be "nonsense" and "discussion" as a result of it? The continued "nonsense" is a direct result of the childish actions YOU chose to take over, all things, a discussion on an internet forum.

The last I checked, you stopped the pinging, which clearly I'm happy about. However, I think you owe Mabus and myself an apology for your actions, and if you are willing to apologize for this, I'll be happy to forget it ever happened and chalk this nonsense up to a temporary lapse in judgment. God knows we all have them, and I'll be the first to admit I've had them over discussion on an internet forum, I've displayed a lapse of good judgment here and on TMC. I've also been man enough to admit when I've made a mistake, and I've been man enough to publicly apologize when I've wronged someone… ask Davion, because I've publicly apologize to him when I've made an ass of myself by running off to TMC to whine about something.

So what will it be?

Can we please take the DoS stuff to another thread. I'd rather not have to start yet another thread to talk about just the technical issues. Thank you.

I'm fine with that. It certainly wasn't my intention to derail the thread and take focus off of the core issue, which I think is important to get clarified.

I hope we're close to having this behind us anyway.

If you think I'm going to apologise to you then you're dreaming, and the only reason I've stopped is because it's boring and the point was made. If I ever feel like making a crawler again I will, with utter disregard to you wishing it to find your mud or not.

You might be able to push around mudbytes (who provides you with a service you can opt out of any time by removing your mud from their listing) but I'm a private citizen and you can't push me around. 1 connection attempt every minute or two does not constitute a DoS attack, regardless of what convoluted reasoning you can come up with.

Thank you for clarifying who the adults and the children are, and who is willing to take the high road and who isn't. I hope this stands a testament of your character for all to see, because I feel that it speaks volumes.

I guess your idea of taking the high road is insulting and demanding apologies?