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Detecting when the user list is complete on an NMDC hub

Posted: 14 Dec 2012, 14:36
by Ayo
I was trying to find a way to detect when my client was received the full user list of a hub, so I connected to a bunch of (public) hubs and logged the sequence of commands that they send to the client. I'll list my results here so that they might be useful to others as well.

My client performs the regular login sequence (with "$Supports NoGetINFO NoHello UserIP2"), waits for its own $Hello and then replies with a $GetNickList. The results below are what I received after that. I've not listed the $UserCommand messages which almost every hub sends regardless of whether you have "UserCommand" in your $Supports. I've compressed all $MyINFO messages of other users to a "$MyINFO ..". This listing does not include a $MyINFO for the connecting client, unless otherwise noted. "$MyINFO self" is the $MyINFO of the connecting client.

Code: Select all

Ptokax 0.4.1.2 and 0.4.2.0:
  - $HubName
  - Hub version chat message
  - $MyINFO ...
  - $MyINFO self
  - $OpList
  - $UserIP self
  - MOTD

FlexHub (Beta 0.2 svn: 1365 and 1409)
  - $HubName
  - $MyINFO .. (first batch)
  - $MyINFO self
  - $OpList
  - $UserIP self
  - MOTD
  - $MyINFO .. (second batch)
  - $MyINFO self
  - $BotList
  - $OpList (duplicate)

Open DC Hub 0.8.2:
  - MOTD
  - $NickList
  > $GetINFO ..
  - $OpList
  - $MyINFO .. (same order as requested)
  (No support for $UserIP)

DB Hub (version unknown):
  - $MyINFO self
  - MOTD
  - $MyINFO ..
  - $OpList
  (No $UserIP, despite the hub indicating support for it)

Verlihub 0.9.8e-r2 and 0.9.9a:
  - $UserIP self
  - MOTD
  - $HubTopic
  - $MyINFO ..
  - $MyINFO self
  - $OpList
  - $MyINFO self

YnHub 1.036:
  - $HubName
  - MOTD
  - $OpList
  - $MyINFO .. (including self, sorted ASCIIbetically)
  - $UserIP self
The presence of the "$UserIP" message may be part of the hub configuration and hub owners may have disabled it, so I don't think it's a good idea to rely on that. Or, more generally, the above results are just from my observations, I've no idea whether different versions of the same hub or even different configurations will behave the same. I did test about 2 or 3 hubs for each hubsoft, and did not notice any differences between them.

While it's possible to detect when you've got the entire user list for each individual hubsoft, there doesn't seem to be a common order between all hubs. So I've decided to stick with the following (simple and stupid) policy: The user list is "complete" when either a) We've received a $MyINFO from a user of which we've already received a $MyINFO before or b) 10 seconds have passed since the last $MyINFO we received. a) works perfect for Verlihub and Flexhub, which send your own $MyINFO twice. It also works for large hubs where user info tends to change fast. In other situations, the timeout guarantees that something happens, and hopefully hubs and networks are fast enough to not trigger the timeout while sending the userlist. It's not the best policy, but simple enough for now.