In the beginning, our platform was being used for learning. The power and capabilities of our LAN and servers were opened up to my kids, their friend and our community. There were plans to expand and create a sort of “online digital hacker lab”, used for learning code, networking, servers, ect. A lot of people were excited about it, especially for the planned streams of “how to” where I would go through free tutorials online to learn things like HTML & CSS as members could login to their accounts hosted on the network to follow along and see their progress online as well. The idea was pretty cool and it was also talked about how rules, limitations would be put in place as time went on and issues were brought up. The idea of this was to benefit individuals that were highly interested and wanted to learn. The idea didn’t really seem ambitious at all, really just seemed like a simple setup of a single Apache web server with users created within it for each section we would go over. This setup exists in colleges that I have been to before, there was no thought that crossed my mind for what it would attract.
Getting the Apache server running wasn’t any issue at all. Setting up users, ssh port, each user separate logins, list of subscribers on twitch, no issue. On day 1, the hacking began. Totally did not think about someone using SSH to establish a connection, somehow cracking root, setting up screen and docker for whatever reasons. We instantly lost bandwidth due to instant 100% traffic, everyone was asking me what was happening, my bottle of Advil was empty and it was time to make some changes.
SLA (Service Level Agreement) outlines what responsibilities the hoster has and the User has, to include legal issues. None of this was in place or has ever been in place. The bummer of it all is that it has to be in place. No matter how good your intentions are, there will always be good and bad people to take advantage of anything.
As time marches on the platform has been refined to include a small pivot to adjust things up a bit. No longer will I be hosting games for anyone else or server space for anyone else. The decision to cut out an SLA is to lower the risk of having more things to monitor. There is a forum though and it seems that there will need to be an SLA or TOS along with a Community Guidelines living document to address the Forum and conduct appropriate for playing in the Minecraft servers being hosted.
I think it would be fun to also include possible other game servers hosted. As the platform grows, hosting more game servers of different games would be ideal to give more variety. Personally, I would love to have a V-Rising, Valheim and Ark: Survival Evolved – The Island servers running. Requests have been made for Space Engineers, American Truck Simulator and GTA servers which would not be a problem with the hardware and bandwidth available. It should be written in such language to include various additional game servers and services available.
This is an element of the Zeemew platform being built that will be added. I’m really happy to have had learned about this in this class as it will be very valuable going forward.