Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 22:04:49 -0700 From: "Aaron D. Gifford" <agifford@infowest.com> To: isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: IRC - Anyone know anything about this? Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19980126220449.03b35270@infowest.com>
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At 10:42 PM 1/23/98 +0000, Karl Pielorz <kpielorz@tdx.co.uk> wrote: >Hi, > >Can someone either answer the questions below, or point me in the right >direction regards IRC? > >We're a small ISP in the UK - and recently all our customers have been >'booted' off other UK ISP's IRC servers (notably Demon) - Not that were saying >this is _wrong_ or anything, as it's their IRC server, their bandwidth etc... > >My questions are: > >1. Where can I get any documentation about setting up IRC on FreeBSD? - what >IRC servers are popular etc.? I'm slightly familiar with the Undernet variation of IRC server, called ircu. At least I was a few years ago. I haven't kept up since then, but I've still got a few references. The Undernet irc daemon development web page is at: http://www.xs4all.nl/~carlo17/ircd-dev/ You can download the latest ircu server at: ftp://ftp.undernet.org/irc/servers/ircu2.10.01.tgz >2. If I setup a local IRC server - this isn't going to suck all our bandwidth >is it? - Am I right in thinking it will only use as much bandwidth as the >clients it's supporting are using? (e.g. 4 clients in 5 channels means it will >only be receiving data sent to those 4 clients in 5 channels, and not _all_ >the other channels being sent? - kinda like an IRC proxy 'server' more than >anything else?) The problem with IRC the basic server design (at least this was the case a few years ago -- I don't know how much this has changed) is that the channel and user databases are maintained on each and every server, no matter how many local users are actually online on any subset of channels. So channel topics changes, mode changes, online user list (list of each and every IRC user online everywhere on every connected server), and the channel user lists (1 list per channel, listing who is on that channel and what their status is, whether channel operator, etc). The various flavors of the original IRC server-to-server protocol attempt to synchronize the databases in real-time. It's this maintainence of databases that eats bandwidth for small end-user IRC server sites, even if the server site had NO users online. There were proposals to make "leaf node" servers that query upstream "hub" servers for data on a need-to-know basis and only do real-time synchronization on channels that local users are actually participating in. I don't know what progress has been made on these designs since last I browsed ircu code. >I've played around with ircd, and got some 'interesting' results, which bare >no comparison to the config files I thought I'd been setting up - I thought >I'd better find out more info - before I go round causing 'trouble' ;-) > >Thanks for any help, > >Regards, > >Karl Pielorz Good luck in your IRC endeavors. Aaron out.
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