1. Internet Relay Chat David Holl IS 373

2. Overview Introduction Standards Body History Specifications Advantages and Disadvantages Privacy Security Pervasiveness Reliability Robustness Interoperability Support of the community Maintainability Ease of use Application of IRC Conclusion

3. Introduction What is Internet Relay Chat? Multi-user chat program Users interact in channels Servers connect to each other to create networks Limited file sharing capabilities

4. Standards Body Created by volunteers RFCs with the IETF

5. History Created by Jarkko Oikarinen of Oulu University in Finland in 1988 1991 - IRC used in Gulf War and Russian Coup attempt RFC 1459 published in 1993 “Great Split” in 1996 RFC’s 2810 – 2813 published in 2000

6. Specifications RFC 1459 – first specification RFC 2810 – IRC architecture RFC 2811 – IRC channel management RFC 2812 – Client protocol RFC 2813 – Server protocol

7. Pros and Cons Pros Basic standard is widely used and most clients can connect to most servers Lightweight and flexible chat system Loose standard leads to wide variety of clients and servers Cons Somewhat primitive Very loose standard leads to incompatibility between servers, dividing up networks

8. Privacy Anything in a channel may be logged by any user IRSeek Generally IPs are concealed but are still recorded by the server and can be viewed To ensure private one-on-one communication use Direct Client-to-Client

9. Security Standard only briefly discusses security Authentication is done server side based on server-recorded passwords and DNS lookup Additional security up to extra features outside of the standard Primary security threat through filesharing Some server or client implementations may have security holes

10. Pervasiveness Implementations of the standard for nearly every OS with TCP/IP 500,000 to 750,000 users daily Hundreds of networks and servers Generally small, niche online communities

11. Reliability and Robustness Generally dependent on implementation Netsplits between servers disrupts networks; frequency is server-based Larger IRC networks fairly reliable

12. Interoperability Loose coupling Clients and servers meet minimum requirements of the standard to communicate Some servers cannot

13. Support of the Community IRC has a relatively small but active community Design differences cause passionate divisions (see “Great Split”) Community isn’t really active in further development

14. Maintainability Standard essentially hasn’t been updated since 2000 New standards unlikely to be written due to entrenched variations in implementations

15. Ease of Use Major clients are fairly easy to use Setting up a server requires both a UNIX system and some skill with it

16. Application of IRC Collaboration on software projects freenode General communications Avoiding communication blackout such as in the 1991 Russian coup attempt File sharing Direct Client-to-Client communication

17. Conclusion Useful chat program if somewhat primitive in appearance or functionality Loose standard causes some security concerns and reduces reliability and robustness Tightening the standard would meet resistance and might damage or destroy small but dedicated communities

18. Resources http://irc.netsplit.de/ http://trout.snt.utwente.nl/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=2& Number=194218&Searchpage=2&Main=36021&Words=Wikipedia&topic=0&Se arch=true#Post194218 http://www.mirc.com/khaled/faq.html http://www.quakenet.org/history.php http://www.irc.org/history_docs/jarkko.html http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/communications/logs/ http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1459 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2810 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2811 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2812 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2813 http://daniel.haxx.se/irchistory.html http://www.irc.org/history_docs/ http://www.livinginternet.com/r/r.htm