<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >Brief History of IRC</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="Linux IRC mini-HOWTO" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="About IRC" HREF="about.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Beginner's guide on using IRC" HREF="beginners.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="sect1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >Linux IRC mini-HOWTO</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="about.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="beginners.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="sect1" ><H1 CLASS="sect1" ><A NAME="bhistory" ></A >3. Brief History of IRC</H1 ><P >The first IRC daemon was written in the summer of 1998 by Jarkko "WiZ" Oikarinen of the University of Oulu, Finland. Originally intended as a BBS-style replacement for Talk, IRC quickly spread; first through Scandinavian, and then throughout the rest of the world. Within a year there were over 40 servers linked up.</P ><P >At this stage there was only one network, and so a name unnecessary - it was simply 'IRC'; but as the size of the network grew, disagreements began to form. IRC was a pretty chaotic medium with netsplits, nick collisions, and channel takeovers all commonplace; and it was inevitable that at some stage users would split off to form their own networks.</P ><P >One of the first major splits was in 1992, when Wildthang created the Undernet network. Originally intended as a test network, Undernet quickly grew, gaining a reputation as a friendly network due to it's introduction of services to protect users and channels.</P ><P >Two years later, Undernet itself forked, the new networking becoming DALnet. DALnet's founder, dalvenjah, took Undernet's concept of services to a new level, introducing support for nick registration, G-lines, and a host of other features.</P ><P >Meanwhile on IRCnet (as the original IRC network was now known), feelings where running high. IRCnet was opposed to the concept of channel/nick 'ownership' which Undernet and DALnet had introduced, but clearly something had to be done about the constant channel takeovers that were occuring. Two alternative ideas were proposed: nick/channel delay, and timestamping (see http://www.irc-help.org for information), but there was bitter dispute over which to implement.</P ><P >In July of 1996, IRCnet split, with most of the North American servers leaving to form EFnet, leaving IRCnet as a mostly European network.</P ><P >Since then, hundreds of other smaller networks have formed, most using modified versions of either DALnet, EFnet, IRCnet, or Undernet's ircd.</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="about.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="beginners.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >About IRC</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" > </TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Beginner's guide on using IRC</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >