Strangely enough, that's one of the big draws for me. I'm "on the spectrum" and often find face-to-face socialisation and making new contacts very draining. I tend to prefer systems to people - although as time went on, I realised one of the things I really enjoy about DN42 is making the human contacts!

After getting started with the various "auto peering" systems, I've been making much more of an effort to find individual operators[1], and add myself to the peerfinder and hang out on IRC.

It really does feel like the "old internet" and while the technology and learning opportunities are great, it's the people that really make the network.

[1]=If you're interested, I'm more than happy to peer with you - details at https://markround.com/dn42

Yeah, the community seems great, I enjoyed reading IRC logs :)