topmudsites.com: Mud Server Status Protocol

Link: MSSP (Mud Server Status Protocol)

A new development to make MUDs more visible. MUDs which support it can be registered to be scanned automatically, allowing them to have update to date entries in MUD lists.

MSSP Mud Crawler - The only site scanning MSSP supporting MUDs as yet.

The original design is to embed it in the telnet option negotiation, and there's some talk about adding support for it to the maintained version of MudOS, FluffOS.

The telnet option negotiation follows the standard approach:

IAC WILL MSSP    indicates the server supports MSSP.
IAC DO   MSSP    indicates the client supports MSSP.
IAC DONT MSSP    indicates the client doesn't support MSSP.

It is expected that the work involved in getting existing MUDs to implement a telnet option negotiation solution may be prohibitive, and to that end, a easier to add, normal text-based login screen mode is also being fleshed out.

A crawler sends the following text when it connects:

MSSP-REQUEST\r\n

The MUD server then responds with:

MSSP-REPLY-START\r\n

Followed by a sequence of lines in the pattern:

KEY\tVALUE\r\n

Etc..

The MudBytes forum has a dedicated forum for MSSP.