Charybdis and ratbox are both installable in that fashion and easy to configure, not to mention they are also more stable, better-programmed, and better optimis

Charybdis and ratbox are both installable in that fashion and easy to configure, not to mention they are also more stable, better-programmed, and better optimised for large networks than ngircd. With ngircd it's trivial to cause a netsplit by flooding; also, the dev Alex Barton admitted a while ago to neglecting proper input validation from server-to-server links, claiming servers are "trusted" ... I think after a while he finally agreed that it wasn't best practice and that all incoming data should be considered untrusted and hostile, but the fact that he didn't care at one point speaks volumes for the rest of his code which is probably still unsafe and unidiomatic to a degree. Meanwhile, ratbox and its charybdis successor both practise proactive defensive coding for untrusted input and I have witnessed no crashes with either, and I have been able to modify both their sources with relatively little trouble. IP spoofing is possible on ratbox and charybdis; host cloaking is possible on charybdis but I would not depend on it. Personally I believe IP addresses are public information, but for those who don't agree with me, it's super easy to spoof hosts. Not to mention, both ratbox and charybdis support alternate I:lines (connection classes) for bouncers and the like.