HM2K

On Sunday July 19 2009 Hardy announced on the EFnet website that Demon Internet will be delinking efnet.demon.co.uk and hub.uk from the EFnet IRC network in August.

For me, it marks the end of an era. There are no more UK IRC servers on the EFnet IRC network.

Gone are those days that I remember back in 1998 when the IRC protocol was an important part of the internet for any ISP.

It seems that IRC for many people has been replaced by many other services such as Instant Messaging, Social Networks, Blogs and BitTorrent. Yet IRC is still here.

I have put the delink down to the fact that Demon can no longer justify the running costs of such a service in the current economic climate.

It’s a real sign of the times when Demon, one of the first commercial UK ISPs can no longer support a service it has been running for over 16 years.

Demon has become a household name through the sponsorship of the EFnet IRC server and has become a very reputable ISP because of it, especially to administrators.

Demon has not released any kind of announcement nor has it updated it’s site to reflect the change and as I am not a Demon customer they have refused to comment on the situation.

Is this the end for EFnet UK? or Is this the start of the end for EFnet?  I hope not…

I’ve decided to start making steps in the right direction and so I’ve setup a website and mailing list called EFnet UK.

If you would like to be part of EFnet UK, please join the EFnet UK mailing list.

EFnet needs a new sponsor for a UK IRC server and we need your help to get one. Maybe you can help.

Thanks.

Update 09/10/09: Multiplay is now sponsoring a new EFnet UK server. efnet.demon.co.uk is dead, long live efnet.multiplay.co.uk. Thanks goes to @JamesOff.