A Quick Update

Hello, Hi and Welcome, It’s been a while since we’ve posted an update so here’s an update of where we’re at.

As many of you will be aware, Freenode as it was has changed and many of its staff and users have migrated to Libera.Chat. We do still operate a channel on Freenode but also have one on Libera.Chat for your convenience. We also have channels you can request in on networks listed here. Due to the drama that I’m sure many of you are aware of, Libera.Chat is considered our main network at present and this is based on all of our staff voluntarily moving to this network.

Please be aware, if you have quite possibly by accident signed up with us for new accounts when you wanted to obtain 3 networks as per our terms of service, we are now actively suspending multiple accounts. If somehow you have requested more than one account when it should have been a network request, let us know by emailing support@bnc4free.com. We will be able to merge the networks from your other accounts into one of the accounts you have and no other action will be taken in terms of violating the Terms of Service for multiple accounts. Any accounts detected before your email may be suspended by our services bot but we will rectify this upon receipt of your email. For Further clarification, this does not apply to users that have more than 1 network on their account and only applies to users that have more than 1 account with a different network on each account.

Many thanks again for the continued use and support of bnc4free, we’re constantly working away in the background to improve and continue our service and are fully aware that without you it wouldn’t be possible.

Thanks for keeping with us

Freenode Changes

Dear those that use Freenode on our service,

From today your host will change when you reconnect. Instead of the normal vhost we have assigned you will have “gateway/shell/bnc4free/x-sznknfelebihegpe” or something similar.

Please note that any unaffiliated cloaks you have on Freenode or group cloaks are unaffected by this change. You most likely will receive a bnc4free cloak initially on connect unless you use SASL but once you identify to your nickname, the usual unaffiliated or group cloak will apply.

We appreciate this is annoying for anyone that runs bots or services that rely on hostnames. We have taken these steps to mitigate ddos that may originate from users of freenode.

Many thanks again for the continued use of bnc4free and we will continue to do what we can for you.

Server Updates

Hello! We have some exciting news that there will a new bouncer update rolled out within the next few days. This update fixes a couple of critical bugs, adds a few new features/modules and adds translations for modules and messages that were lacking translation before. The fixes and updates in this upgrade are as follows:

• New Authentication Module (SASL/CertFP/NickServ and server passwords). This will enable fallback options, for example is SASL fails, it will try CertFP and if CertFP fails it will try NickServ as a last resort. This also allows for those who need a bouncer to a network that requires a password to set a password for connecting.
• New Web Interface for the Log Module. This will allow you view logs (up to 100MB in size) from within the web admin and download log files that are stored by the log module.
• Update & Fix Translations for Away Module
• Add Translations for the main page (displayed after login) and translate error messages on other pages
• API: Numerous fixes to JSON formatting and structure
• Improvements to abuse prevention measures
• Improvements to staff/audit logging
• Fix for DenyModNetwork feature
• Fix for DenySetIdent feature added in previous update

Unfortunately this will mean a brief downtime of each of our bouncer servers for around 5-20 minutes while the server is reconfigured and upgraded. Final fixes and testing of the new upgrade will be carried out tomorrow (10th January 2021) with the intention to upgrade Pear server almost immediately once the upgrade is ready to be rolled out. Apple server will be upgraded a short while after Pear’s upgrade. More specific information on the estimated time/date of both upgrades will be posted on Facebook, Twitter and in a Reddit Post.

In the last week we have been working on updating/upgrading our services bot on IRC and parts of the website. This work will continue into next week to provide more features such as ability to reset passwords, delete your own networks and add other IRC servers from the same network into your server list (useful for networks like EFnet that have regular splits/downtime).

That’s all for now but we’ll provide you with more updates in the near future!

Network Issues affecting various services

At around 10:03 UTC on Tuesday 5th of January, we discovered that a number of our services had gone offline. These services were affected:

• Apple Bouncer (Both IRC & Webpanel)
• Main Website (https://bnc4free.com/)
• Wiki (https://wiki.bnc4free.com/)
• Status Information (https://status.bnc4free.com/)
• Bouncer API (https://api.bnc4free.com)
• IRC Services Bot

This outage was caused by a network fault at our provider which they are in the process of rectifying. Since the initial downtime there has also been a very brief period of downtime at around 12:47 UTC. Our provider are still working to resolve the issue and its anticipated the latency on all the above affected services and possibly brief periods of downtime may continue during today.

Update (18:55 UTC): All earlier network issues appear to now be resolved.

Apologies for the inconvenience that the downtime of all the affected services today has caused

Recent Downtime

At around 10:27 UTC on Monday the 14th of December, we discovered that a number of our services had gone offline. These services were affected:

• Apple Bouncer (Both IRC & Webpanel)
• Main Website (https://bnc4free.com/)
• Wiki (https://wiki.bnc4free.com/)
• Status Information (https://status.bnc4free.com/)
• Bouncer API (https://api.bnc4free.com)
• IRC Services Bot

This outage was caused by a fault with our service providers router of which they managed to resolve at around 13:30 UTC on Monday the 14th of December

In addition to these services issues, Google Suite also had issues that started around 11:30 UTC on Monday the 14th of December. This meant that for a majority of our service downtime, we were also unable to access emails. This issue has now been resolved and we can receive and send emails again.

Apologies for the inconvenience that the downtime of all the affected services today has caused

December Update

Hello! It’s been a while, I know it isn’t yet December but it is a month tomorrow since we last posted. To keep everyone in the loop and be frankly honest, (I’m gonna say the word we all hate) Covid-19. Unfortunately I’ve not been able to yet upgrade the servers and our services bot (i really want to) due to personal circumstances. I’m probably more annoyed about it than some of those expecting it. The aim was and still is to roll out an update at Christmas which i used to do annually on Christmas day which I did almost regularly when this service first started. I intend to do that this year but i cannot offer a guarantee, for reasons including internet speed where i will be staying this Christmas to a whole range of other personal circumstances right now that require more attention than me programming.

I hope (and i really do) that we can update the servers over Christmas with the newer version and our services. It will be a shame to lose the 148 days uptime we have on our Apple server and 80 days our Pear server currently has (both will be more by Christmas) but we will continue to be the stable provider and people we’ve always been even after the upgrade.

Once again, I’d like to thank those that use our services, no matter how small or large we really do thank you for choosing us and hopefully we don’t disappoint! If for any reason you need assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us using our contact page (email is preferred at the moment)

More updates will be provided in the next week or so.

It’s almost November! Here’s an update..

Hi, Hello and Welcome to BNC4FREE. 2020 has been particularly strange and difficult year for many of us across the world due to the word we need not mention and its viral ability. This year we decided to re-launch BNC4FREE because IRC like many of the other platforms known to us is a method and a way to communicate with others and in the time when it was needed most, we decided to re-launch. A few things I feel that need to be outlined is that we did not set out on this venture to be the best, in-fact there were no expectations at all when restarting this project. The soul intention was to provide bouncers to those that need one and that I feel is what we’ve done and will continue to do.

It is unfortunate that there is a need to re-iterate the following rules when it comes to requesting bouncers from us. Trust me, these are for your protection and to ensure that you can connect to the network using our bouncers because the last thing we want is our addresses banned from a network and us having to get into a lengthy appeal process. The rules we’ll re-highlight are as follows:

• Accounts that have been configured via the web panel but never logged into on IRC after 7 days will be deemed inactive and will be removed. We’re not here for you to use a bouncer to keep your 1-2 user channel open or increase your channel count.
• Requests for networks (listed below) require the user to have been registered with NickServ for atleast a week (7 days). The username you request MUST be your NickServ username:
  • Freenode
  • Rizon
  • DALNet
  • Espernet
• In the event that we are unable to verify the date your nickname has been registered on the networks above or you have chosen a username that doesn’t match your NickServ name, the request will be rejected.
• You must not request from TOR Exit Nodes, Tunnels, Open VPN’s (including those that require any sort of sign up/registration), Free Shells, Proxies, IRCCloud, KiwiIRC, WSIRC or Mibbit
• Please remember when requesting an SSL port to put ‘+’ in front of the port number. ‘+6697’ not ‘6697’. We have fixed no end of these and won’t be in future!

All other terms of our service can be found here. We are looking to update our servers in the near future to patch up a few things, bring ZNC up to the latest version and add a few features. This is likely to be around Christmas (We’ll announce dates before hand). In the meantime, please do continue to enjoy using our service and if you haven’t yet joined, please consider doing so!

Changes to Terms/Rules

Effective from today (but includes any pending requests and active accounts), the following new terms and rules will be enforced:

• Accounts that have been configured via the web panel but never logged into on IRC after 7 days will be deemed inactive and will be removed. We are not here to provide a connection simply to keep your channel in existence or to increase your channel count.
• Requests for major networks (listed below) will require the user making the request to have been registered on the network they are requesting for at least 7 days before the request is made. If you’ve joined the network and registered with services (NickServ) the same day that you’re making the request, you clearly don’t need a bouncer as you’ve only just discovered the network (If you do for some reason need one, prove us wrong and justify why). The networks we will be checking on this initially (and applies to currently pending requests) is as follows:
  • Freenode
  • Rizon
  • DALNet
  • Espernet

• In the event that we are unable to verify the date your nickname has been registered on the networks above (The only exception being if NickServ is down at the time we attempt to check, in which case the request will remain pending until we can check), the request will be rejected.

We apologise for having to enforce these new rules/restrictions but we are committed to ensuring that genuine users of this service can continue to use our service without the risk of network bans caused by a single user using our services for ban evasions, abuse or any other intention that impacts negatively on a network and results in actions that affects multiple users.

Once again, thank you to those using BNC4FREE and we’ll provide an update on our “July Update” shortly.

July Update

Hello! We have some exciting news that there will a new bouncer update rolled out later this month. This update will fix a few internal bugs, add a few new features and fix/add a few translations for modules and messages that were lacking translation before. We’re still updating a few things but the changes currently implemented for the next upgrade are as follows:

Bouncer Software Changes & Updates

• New Authentication Module (SASL/CertFP/NickServ and server passwords). This will enable fallback options, for example is SASL fails, it will try CertFP and if CertFP fails it will try NickServ as a last resort. This also allows for those who need a bouncer to a network that requires a password to set a password for connecting.
• New Web Interface for the Log Module. This will allow you view logs (up to 100MB in size) from within the web admin and download log files that are stored by the log module.
• Update & Fix Translations for Away Module
• Add Translations for the main page (displayed after login) and translate error messages on other pages (Disclaimer: These may not be 100% accurate)
• API: Change the Channel/Network structure in user/info
• API: Add the ability to set passwords in user/update
• Various internal improvements to abuse measures
• Various improvements to internal logging
• Fix DenySetIdent feature added in previous update

IRC Services Bot Changes & Updates

• Fix the request command so that various valid email addresses now work correctly (Already fixed in current bot temporarily)
• Ability to reset password and to clear allowed hosts if you’ve locked yourself out or your IP has changed
• Various improvements to abuse measures
• Updates to Staff Commands
• Internal updates to string formatting and more

Unfortunately this will mean a brief downtime of our bouncer of around 20 minutes while the server is upgraded. We don’t have a date set for updating yet as were trying to throw as many improvements and fixes in as we can so that we can prevent having to restart the server again for a while (Don’t worry, were also testing them so there shouldn’t be any crashes once we upgrade!). The upgrade is likely to take place towards the end of July and an exact date will be announced within the next week or so.

This update will also be the first step to what we call the “BNC4FREE One” Account system. We’ll be able to link up website logins and wiki logins with BNC4FREE accounts (new and existing) in the near future which means you’ll get emails of our updates from here (you will be able to opt out if you wish) and have an account on a wiki should you wish to assist us with documentation. It should be noted that we do not know users passwords and a bit of information on how we’re making that work can be found here

In the next few weeks we will also be taking on new staff to handle requests, manage the support email inbox and assist us with translations. More information on how to apply these positions will be available in the coming weeks.

Thanks again for choosing BNC4FREE and we’ll update you again soon!

Server Update for Apple

Hello!

We have updated our ‘Apple’ server! The update was due to take place on Tuesday the 16th of June however this was brought forward due to a server crash. A few of the changes in this update are listed below:

• i18n Support enabling a language setting that will translate GUI messages and more to the language you set
• Fixes to DisableUser ensuring that disabled users are disconnected as soon as they are disabled
• Prevention of changing network name as we use this to track networks and sessions
• An ability to deny users to change idents on some networks, allowing networks to ban users by ident to prevent abuse
• An ability to set and send WEBIRC commands to a network in the same way KiwiIRC/Mibbit does to networks that have a webirc/cgiirc block added in their config for us which will allow networks to ban the unchangeable host of a user
• Patches that bring our bouncer version (ZNC 1.7.5) up to speed to version 1.8.1
• API Module: Changes to the way channels are displayed

All updates on the day of the update will be posted to our social media accounts, our IRC channels and sent as a notice to those connected to the bouncer. We anticipate the upgrade will take no longer than 10 minutes and appologise for the inconvenience this may cause.