From: jecoleb@eos.ncsu.edu (have clue, will travel)
Subject: Re: NETREK BANNED !
Keywords: banned
Reply-To: jecoleb@eos.ncsu.edu
Organization: The Ghost Of Christmas Past Society
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 21:11:43 GMT


Andy McFadden (fadden@uts.amdahl.com) writes:
>In article <Nov05.015103.34939@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU>
>dd435157@longs.LANCE.ColoState.Edu (Dan Doner) writes:
>>The admins here at colorado state university have banned netrek.
>>[...]
>>quit trying to play it.  They used a metaserver to get the addresses of the
>>netrek servers.  They then changed the routing to point to dev/null or the
>>address equivelant for all these servers.

>Allow me to introduce you to "trekhopd".  It's a single process running on
>a machine somewhere which forwards Netrek connections.  I use it to hop
>over a firewall machine.

Er... allow me to throw a spoonful of cold water on the bonfire, if I may.

Obviously, the admins at CSU have a bug up their asses concerning netrek,
or they wouldn't have banned it.  How do you think they're going to react
when one happens to walk into a room with someone who's visibly playing the
game AND is hiding the process under another name?

(image of sysadmin going ballistic deleted)

>>When confronted, the admin in charge said limited hours for netrek play might
>>be an option, but it looked like too hard of a thing to deal with, and the
>>last thing he wanted to do was spend any of his precious time dealing with
>>trying to limit access to these hosts to certain times.

Your main hope here, Dan, is one of two options:

1) Work with the sysadmin.  While he does sound like a bit of a prick, that's
his job.  To use my favorite quote from an old rec.games.mud flamewar, "If I
hire a sysadmin and he's NOT a fascist, I've wasted my money."

He said that it "looked" like too hard of a thing to deal with.  (How hard can
a fricking cron job be?)  Well, find a way to show that it's NOT that hard.
Propose an honor system of playing only after certain hours, with offenders 
having their accounts spooged or getting whapped on the hand with a long wooden
ruler or something.  Do whatever it takes to get official words-on-paper that
it's okay under SOME circumstances.

Or:

2) Use trekhopd to hide your connection, or go all-out and compile a local
server from time to time.  Good luck keeping it secret...  If you're *TACTFUL*
about when and where you use it, this isn't so bad an option.

Free advice from someone whose sysadmins DID ban netrek once;  TACT is the
word of the day.  Be nice, kiss ass, keep things quiet, and they might decide
that you (or they) are human after all and decide to work with you on this.
That reasoning alone is why netrek is now "quasi-legal" at NCSU again.

I empathize with you, buddy...  I've been in your shoes.  Good luck...

				--Commodore Video Sex Pope, NCSU
				--"It's EMACS, Dr. Meier, HONEST... it just
				--         LOOKS like netrek."
			
--
                         jecoleb@eos.ncsu.edu 
          ---------     have clue, will travel.    ---------
  "I am a penis. Worship me."--lead singer of rock band Bicycle Face,
vainly attempting to gain attention of the crowd at the Cat's Cradle
in Chapel Hill, while opening for Mojo Nixon & The Toad Liquors