RFC 2810 (rfc2810) - Page 2 of 10


Internet Relay Chat: Architecture



Alternative Format: Original Text Document



RFC 2810           Internet Relay Chat: Architecture          April 2000


         5.2.3  To A List .........................................   6
      5.3  One-To-All .............................................   6
         5.3.1  Client-to-Client ..................................   6
         5.3.2  Client-to-Server ..................................   7
         5.3.3  Server-to-Server ..................................   7
   6.  Current Problems ...........................................   7
      6.1  Scalability ............................................   7
      6.2  Reliability ............................................   7
      6.3  Network Congestion .....................................   7
      6.4  Privacy ................................................   8
   7.  Security Considerations ....................................   8
   8.  Current Support And Availability ...........................   8
   9.  Acknowledgements ...........................................   8
   10.  References ................................................   8
   11.  Author's Address ..........................................   9
   12.  Full Copyright Statement ..................................  10

1. Introduction

   The IRC (Internet Relay Chat) protocol has been designed over a
   number of years for use with text based conferencing.  This document
   describes its current architecture.

   The IRC Protocol is based on the client-server model, and is well
   suited to running on many machines in a distributed fashion.  A
   typical setup involves a single process (the server) forming a
   central point for clients (or other servers) to connect to,
   performing the required message delivery/multiplexing and other
   functions.

   This distributed model, which requires each server to have a copy
   of the global state information, is still the most flagrant problem
   of the protocol as it is a serious handicap, which limits the maximum
   size a network can reach.  If the existing networks have been able to
   keep growing at an incredible pace, we must thank hardware
   manufacturers for giving us ever more powerful systems.

2. Components

   The following paragraphs define the basic components of the IRC
   protocol.

2.1 Servers

   The server forms the backbone of IRC as it is the only component
   of the protocol which is able to link all the other components
   together: it provides a point to which clients may connect to talk to




Kalt                         Informational