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coding: utf-8

title: Internet Relay Chat Client Protocol abbrev: irc-client docname: draft-oakley-irc-client-latest

submissionType: independent category: info

stand_alone: yes pi: [toc, sortrefs, symrefs, comments]

obsoletes: 1459, 2810, 2811, 2812

author:

ins: D. Oakley
name: Daniel Oakley
role: editor
org: ircdocs
email: daniel@danieloaks.net

--- abstract

The Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol has been designed over a number of years, with multitudes of implementations and use cases appearing. This document describes the IRC Client-Server protocol.

IRC is a text-based chat protocol which has proven itself valuable and useful. It is well-suited to running on many machines in a distributed fashion. A typical setup involves multiple servers connected in a distributed network. Messages are delivered through this network and state is maintained across it for the connected clients and active channels.

--- middle

Introduction

The Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol has been designed over a number of years, with multitudes of implementations and use cases appearing. This document describes the IRC Client-Server protocol.

IRC is a text-based chat protocol which has proven itself valuable and useful. It is well-suited to running on many machines in a distributed fashion. A typical setup involves multiple servers connected in a distributed network. Messages are delivered through this network and state is maintained across it for the connected clients and active channels.

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in {{!RFC2119}}.

IRC Concepts

This section describes concepts behind the implementation and organisation of the IRC protocol, which are useful in understanding how it works.

Architectural

A typical IRC network consists of servers and clients connected to those servers, with a good mix of IRC operators and channels. This section goes through each of those, what they are and a brief overview of them.

Servers

Servers form the backbone of IRC, providing a point to which clients may connect and talk to each other, and a point for other servers to connect to, forming an IRC network.

The most common network configuration for IRC servers is that of a spanning tree, where each server acts as a central node for the rest of the network it sees. Other topologies are being experimented with, but right there are no others widely used in production.

                          [ Server 15 ]  [ Server 13 ] [ Server 14 ]
                                /                \         /
                               /                  \       /
       [ Server 11 ] ------ [ Server 1 ]       [ Server 12 ]
                             /        \          /
                            /          \        /
                 [ Server 2 ]          [ Server 3 ]
                   /       \                      \
                  /         \                      \
          [ Server 4 ]    [ Server 5 ]         [ Server 6 ]
           /    |    \                           /
          /     |     \                         /
         /      |      \____                   /
        /       |           \                 /
[ Server 7 ] [ Server 8 ] [ Server 9 ]   [ Server 10 ]

                                 :
                              [ etc. ]
                                 :

{: #figops artwork-align="center" title="Format of a typical IRC network"}

There have been several terms created over time to describe the roles of different servers on an IRC network. Some of the most common terms are as follows:

  • Hub: A hub is a server that connects to multiple other servers. For instance, in the figure above, Server 2, Server 3, and Server 4 would be examples of hub servers.
  • Core Hub: A core hub is typically a hub server that connects fairly major parts of the IRC network together. What is considered a core hub will change depending on the size of a network and what the administrators of the network consider important. For instance, in the figure above, Server 1, Server 2, and Server 3 may be considered core hubs by the network administrators.
  • Leaf: A leaf is a server that is only connected to a single other server on the network. Typically, leafs are the primary servers that handle client connections. In the figure above, Servers 7, 8, 10, 13, 14, and others would be considered leaf servers.
  • Services: A services server is a special type of server that extends the capabilities of the server software on the network (ie, they provide services to the network). Services are not used on all networks, and the capabilities typically provided by them may be built-into server software itself rather than being provided by a separate software package. Features usually handled by services include client account registration (as are typically used for SASL authentication), channel registration (allowing client accounts to 'own' channels), and further modifications and extensions to the IRC protocol. 'Services' themselves are not specified in any way by the protocol. What they provide depends entirely on the software packages being run.

A trend these days is to hide the real structure of a network from regular users. Networks that implement this may restrict or modify commands like MAP so that regular users see every other server on the network as linked directly to the current server. When this is done, servers that do not handle client connections may also be hidden from users (hubs hidden in this way can be called 'hidden hubs'). Generally, IRC operators can always see the true structure of a network.

These terms are not generally used in IRC protocol documentation, but may be used by the administrators of a network in order to differentiate the servers they run and their roles.