A Short Introduction to the
Interesting WWW Links
Chapter Ib: IRC
Internet Relay Chat is multi-user, real-time,
client-server-based online chat system originally invented in 1988 by
Jarkko Oikarinen <jto@tolsun.oulu.fi>.
If you are unfamiliar with IRC, don't worry as there's several helpfull
documents describing IRC.
Once you've your IRC client up and running, the
next task is to select a server to connect to. The servers then form
up networks of various sizes and types. Here's a few...
EFNet
(Eris Free Network)
The oldest (alongside with IRCNet as these two networks once were one)
of all IRC Networks.
- Servers:
- About 50,
mostly in North America.
- Server software:
- Hybrid/Comstud
- Channels:
- Thousands
|
Most of this network was part of EFNet till the great split of July
1996, therefor it has been occasionally called as EuroEFNet.
- Servers:
- About 140,
majority in Europe, but also some in Asia, Australia and North America.
- Server software:
- Ircd
2.9/10-series
|
|
A large network which unlike EFNet and IRCNet offers channel and user
registration services.
- Servers:
- About 45 in
North America, Europe and New Zealand.
- Server software:
- Undernet ircd
|
A bit smaller IRC network with services
like Undernet.
- Servers:
- About 30 in North
America and Europe
- Server software:
- Dalnet ircd
|
- Servers:
- about 10 in
USA.
- Server software:
- Undernet ircd
|
IRC network founded by Amiga freaks.
- Servers:
-
- whiterose.us.amiganet.org (USA)
- thule.no.amiganet.org (Norway)
- kth.se.amiganet.org (Sweden)
- linux.us.amiganet.org (USA)
- stayfree.uk.amiganet.org (UK)
|
|
As name suggests there's several channels dedicated for discussions about
various open source projects on this network.
- Servers:
- About 30 all around
the world
|
For information about even even more IRC networks, look at Yahoo, Saint's List,
The Comprehensive IRC
Network List or networks of
the Internet Relay Chat: a short summary.
Even as it's possible to access IRC servers with
good, old telnet (provided you
know the IRC protocol), there's quite wide
range of friendlier IRC clients available for Amiga, BeOS, Emacs,
Java, Macintosh, MS-DOS, OS/2, Unicen, VM/CMS, VMS and Windows.
- Author:
- Oliver Wagner
- Distribution:
- Shareware, unregistered version has 30 minute time limit.
- Requirements:
- Workbench 2.04 or newer, MUI 3.6
or newer.
- Availability:
- Unregistered version can be found from Aminet sites in comm/tcp-dir.
- Author:
- Jeffrey D. Webster
- Distribution:
- Freeware
- Requirements:
- AmigaOS 2.x or newer, ClassAct
- Availability:
-
Grapevine
- Author:
- Brian J. Cerveny
- Distribution:
- Shareware, crippled unregisted version
- Requirements:
- Workbench 2.04 or newer.
- Availability:
- Unregistered version 1.182 can be downloaded from Aminet sites' comm/net-dir as grapevine.lha.
Unregistered version 1.452 can be downloaded from ftp.warped.com.
See Chat & IRC section on
BeBits's BeOS software catalog.
ERC
- Author:
- Alexander L. Belikoff
- Distribution:
- GNU General Public
Licence
- Availability:
- ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/network/chat/irc/
Irchat
- Author:
- Various
- Distribution:
- GNU General Public
Licence
- Availability:
- ftp.cs.hut.fi
Kiwi
- Author:
- Klaus Zeuge
- Availability:
- ftp.funet.fi
ZenIRC
- Author:
- Per Persson
- Distribution:
- GNU General Public
Licence
- Availability:
- ftp.splode.com
- Author:
- David M. Johnson
- Requirements:
- JRE/JDK 1.1.8 or compatible Java VM
- Author:
- Chris Knight
- Author:
- Harimohan S. Bawa
- Requirements:
- Java VM with JFC
Swing
Comprehensive information about various Macintosh IRC clients can be found
on John Stablehurst's Macintosh IRC Software
Page.
Various
- Availability:
-
IrcII
OS/2 port of Un*x IrcII.
- Availability:
- hobbes.nmsu.edu (and mirrors)
- Distribution:
- Shareware, uncrippled demo version
- Availability:
- hobbes.nmsu.edu (and mirrors)
PM IRC
- Author:
- Roger Bess
- Distribution:
- Shareware (USD 10)
- Availability:
- ???
EZirc
- Distribution:
- Free
- Availability:
- hobbes.nmsu.edu (and mirrors)
- Author:
- Adventure Software
- Distribution:
- Shareware,
free 30-days trial version.
- Author:
- Various, current maintainer Matthew Green
- Availability:
- Eg. ftp.funet.fi,
www.leo.org, cs-ftp.bu.edu.
EPIC
Enchanced Programmable Irc-II Client
- Author:
- Various, currently maintained by EPIC Software Labs (ESL), comprised of
Jeremy Nelson, Jake Kuhon, Robert
Chady, and a cast of a dozen others.
- Requirements:
- ANSI C compiler
- Availability:
- ftp.epicsol.org, ftp.acronet.net,
ftp.neato.org, epic.doggie.net, ftp.parodius.com, clients.undernet.org, ftp.lice.org, ftp.shutdown.org, ftp.memax.krakow.pl and
ftp.funet.fi.
- Author:
- Colten "Panasync" Edwards
- Authors:
- Joshua J. Drake and
Kraig Amador
- Distribution:
- GNU General Public
Licence
- Author:
- Timothy "Toast" Jensen
- Author:
- Timo Sirainen
- Distribution:
- GNU General Public
Licence
- Requirements:
- GLib
- GUI-version (old and unsupported):
X11, GTK+, libPropList and optionally
GNOME-libraries
- Author:
- Per Persson
- Requirements:
- /bin/sh, sed and other basic UNIX tools.
- Author:
- C. Cooke
- Distribution:
- GNU General Public
Licence
- Requirements:
- ksh or compatible shell like
pdksh and
zsh.
- Authors:
- Stan Brooks (current maintainer)
and Dave Cridland (creator)
- Distribution:
- GNU General Public
Licence
- Requirements:
- S-lang library
- Author:
- Andreas 'atte' Gelhausen
- Distribution:
- GNU General Public
Licence
- Requirements:
- X11, IrcII, Tcl/Tk
- Author:
- Ove Kåven
- Distribution:
- GNU General Public
Licence
- Requirements:
- C++ compiler
- Availability:
- ftp.funet.fi,
ftp.uni-stuttgart.de,
ftp.asu.net
- Author:
- Thomas Köhler
- Author:
- Roger Espel Llima
- Distribution:
- GNU General Public
Licence
- Requirements:
- Perl
- Author:
- Lindsay Marshall
(Zircon reports, comments and suggestions to zircon@catless.newcastle.ac.uk)
- Requirements:
- X11, Tcl/Tk
- Author:
- Robert Borrell
- Requirements:
- X11, Qt
- Author:
- Laurent Demailly
- Requirements:
- Tcl/Tk
- Author:
- Tony Gale
- Distribution:
- GNU General Public
Licence
- Requirements:
- X11, GTK+
- Author:
- Andrew Stanley-Jones
- Distribution:
- GNU General Public
Licence
- Requirements
- X11, Perl5, g++, KDE and Qt
- Author:
- Peter "Zed" Zelezny
- Requirements:
- X11, GTK+, optionally also GNOME and Perl
- Author:
- forcer
- Distribution:
- GNU General Public
Licence
- Requirements:
- Guile Scheme
- Requirements:
- X11, Guile Scheme, XForms or GTK+
- Author:
- Patrick Earl
- Requirements:
- X11, Tcl/Tk, C/C++ compiler
SmIRC
- Author:
- Sam Varshavchik
- Distribution:
- GNU General Public
Licence
- Availability:
- ftp://ftp.undernet.org/irc/clients/xwindows/smirc/
- Requirements:
- X11, Motif
- Authors:
- Ivo van der Wijk and Mark de Boer
- Requirements:
- X11, Tcl/Tk libraries
- Author:
- Tony Monroe
- Requirements:
- Perl with Net::IRC module
- Requirements:
- ncurses version >= 4.0
- Author:
- Szymon Stefanek
- Requirements:
- X11, Qt, pthreads
- Distribution:
- GNU General Public
Licence
- Requirements:
- Perl/Tk
- Author:
- Ash Bowers
- Distribution:
- GNU General Public
Licence
- Requirements:
- Tcl/Tk
- Author:
- Carl von Loesch
- Availability:
-
Various
- Availability:
-
- Author:
- Khaled Mardam-Bey
- Distribution:
- Shareware
- Author:
- Northwest Computer Services
- Distribution:
- Shareware (USD 10)
And several others, use the search
engines and indexes, Luke!
- RFC 1459
- The basic IRC server protocol is the base of everything
- Client-to-client
protocol (CTCP)
- an extension for communication between clients
- Direct Client-to-Client
(DCC) protocol
- a method to communicate between IRC clients totally independent of
servers.
Other resources
IRC information resources
from FUNET
Yahoo's IRC links
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Heikki Kantola
<Heikki.Kantola@IKI.FI>
Last modified: Mon Oct 27 10:28:27 EET 2003
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