Internet relay chat commonly referred to as IRC is a form of communication where people send messages via an online chat service. This mode of communication is instant and relies on the Internet for relaying of these messages. The history of IRC dates back in late 80’s when a group of college students set it rolling before the rest of the world jumped ship and adopted this real time means of communication. This has continued to date despite numerous changes in technology. The dominant IRC networks that are in use today are the EFnet and DALnet.

The Rest Of The History Of The Internet Relay Chat Service

At the start, other servers could access the IRC servers and work hand in hand but was later stopped because there were some third party servers that had vested interests like sabotage. However, the eris.berkeley.edu server remained accessible by servers from other networks that wished to do so. In reaction to this, a team of Internet relay chat technicians with the help of a college student named Jarkko Oikarinen, came up with a mechanism to disjoint their activities from those of eris.berkeley.edu server. This is the server that opted to remain and any other to join them at their own wish. The team of IRC operators made it impossible to work together with this server by devising a mechanism of automatically disconnecting IRC servers immediately the Eris servers were noticed.

After a short while, network connections with Internet relay chat terminals started losing network connections with each other. This had an effect to the entire IRC network due to the fact that the entire network is characterized by interconnected nodes. One node getting disconnected led had a direct and indirect effect to the entire nodes in the network. This situation is commonly referred to as net split and can be used by private networks that want to join IRC server network or to sabotage it. This usually occurred when there was a disconnection between nodes. This was by easily gaining access to a node then getting integrated to the entire network after a reconnection. You can easily sabotage this network by changing user nicknames which will not be accessible after the network is up. This is because a node can only have one nickname at a time. Due to frequent net splits, majority of severs adopted the Q-line thus the birth of the Eris free network commonly referred to as EFnet.

However, not all servers jumped ship by adding the Q-line thus was not part of the EFnet. They were commonly referred to as the A-net meaning anarchy networks. They did not stay for long and lacked dominance thus diminished leaving way for EFnet to take over as the only server offering Internet relay chat service.

EFnet had issues with its performance and misuse which led to group seeking their independence. This was the birth of the Undernet that came as a solution to the troubled EFnet. This was through use of less bandwidth for optimal performance and bringing order in its operations. This network continued to grow despite being faced by turbulent times caused by sabotage, internal wrangles and spamming but still remained strong up to date. Continued disagreement with EFnet led to a group of administrators from Europe demanding for split. This spit later called the great split was as a result of strategy and technical differences.