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Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a
form of real-time Internet text
messaging (chat) or
synchronous conferencing.
It is mainly designed for group
communication in discussion
forums, called channels,
but also allows one-to-one
communication via private
message as well as chat
and data transfers via Direct
Client-to-Client.
As of May 2009, the top 100
IRC networks served more
than half a million users at a
time, with hundreds of
thousands of channels (the
vast majority of which stand
mostly vacant), operating on a
total of roughly 1,500 servers
worldwide.
IRC was created by Jarkko
Oikarinen in August 1988 to
replace a program called MUT
(MultiUser Talk) on a BBS
called OuluBox in Finland.
Oikarinen found inspiration in
a chat system known as Bitnet
Relay, which operated on the
BITNET.
IRC was used to report on the
1991 Soviet coup d'état
attempt throughout a media
blackout. It was previously
used in a similar fashion
during the Gulf War. Logs
of these and other events are
kept in the ibiblio archive.
IRC client software is available
for virtually every computer
operating system that
supports TCP/IP networking.
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