max bans?

[bakabaka]

We are having a terrible time getting rid of bottler clients. We don't even run an XDCC site, these people just constantly joinflood and idle. I've written an eggdrop script to detect and ban these fools.. but the EFnet ban list is apparently not nearly big enough to handle them.

So the script clears the ban list when it gets too large (which is about every half hour) the problem is I can't seem to find any static maximum number of bans allowed. What is this number? Sometimes its 31, sometimes its 29, sometimes its in the 40s. It needs to be in the thousands to be useful against these jerks in any case.. but it could at least stay the same across servers.

What is this elusive number, and why does it keep changing? Is it possible to enforce an EFnet-wide ban on bottlers?

[wundr]

What is this elusive number,

From what I understand, the total number of b/e/I modes can be up to 100, from what was voted on last year. Take a look here: http://www.efnet.info/forum/viewtopic.php?t=56 for the announcement on here about it.

and why does it keep changing?

it doesn't keep changing... just some servers may be slow on updating to the new standard, or your list is full of I/e modes.

Is it possible to enforce an EFnet-wide ban on bottlers?

No. There's very little that is network-wide on EFnet... not the IRC-Op standards, not the ircd software, not the server policies, nor the server bans.
Also, as it says on the bottler web site, you can keep bottler clients from staying in your channel by putting "-bottler" in the topic. They may still join, but they will then part the channel without bothering anything, apparently.

[leeh]

So the script clears the ban list when it gets too large (which is about every half hour) the problem is I can't seem to find any static maximum number of bans allowed. What is this number? Sometimes its 31, sometimes its 29, sometimes its in the 40s. It needs to be in the thousands to be useful against these jerks in any case.. but it could at least stay the same across servers.

Its 100 and im fairly sure that its standard across all servers now. If it isnt, there wont be more than a couple where its at the old value of 25.

Its important to note, that the magic number of 100 is for +beI modes combined - if you have 10 +e modes and 10 +I modes, then you can only have 80 +b modes.

The ban limit has to be balanced between what users want, and how easy it would be to abuse it. If its too high, itd be too easy to make servers use excess amounts of cpu/ram. (Personally, I think 100 is too high, but..).

[munky]

if you channel is all regular users (<100 of them), you could go the alternate route, and +b *!*@*, and +e all your regulars. or +i, and +I regulars, etc
though this is not very conducive of inviting new people into the channel