IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat and it is a protocol that facilitates multi-user communication over the Internet. It is primarily designed to enable large discussions and text conferencing, but you can also chat privately with users you meet in a host IRC channel. IRC has been around since the days before the Internet grew into its current form and was a popular means of communication on old BBS systems, but it is still a versatile tool that can be used for many purposes ranging form global, open-source collaboration to simple entertainment. Even though there are many more sophisticated forms of communication that utilize the Internet, IRC remains very popular.
One of the most versatile features of IRC is that it allows people to setup their own dedicated communications networks using the Internet infrastructure. There are many public networks and creating, for example, a Good Host IRC channel is as simple as logging onto one of these, like Undernet or Dalnet. Anyone can create a channel and implement limited security features, but these free networks can be subject to a range of reliability problems. One typical occurrence is a “netsplit” wherein servers that connect the users in a given channel become disconnected from each other. When this happens, in the simplest example, the users connected to either server end up chatting in their own independent channels. Because the administrative rights of IRC are held on what is, essentially, a first-come, first-serve basis, control of the channel can be lost when the two servers reconnect and merge the split channels.
These concerns can be minimized if you are willing to setup your own IRC servers. A company or organization that has units on different parts of globe can implement IRC servers for each unit and set these up to connect to each other. The great advantage of IRC is that it provides the natural conversations facilitated by instant messaging in an environment that allows users to drop on and off network and in and out of IRC channels on the fly without any additional administration or configuration. IRC also allows for a scalable and adaptive organization so that different branches of an organization can form different purpose-oriented channels.
There are a multitude of communications applications and mediums out there, but IRC remains one of the most versatile tools for facilitating communication large, geographically dispersed organization. IRC has been particularly successful in forming productive online communities. One excellent example is the extensive list of IRC channels that have come into existence focusing on discussions relating Wikipedia in general as well as the organization’s many and varied sub-projects. While any project will make use of various mode of communication, the real-time and freeform character of IRC is especially good at fostering creative collaboration.
Those who want to host and IRC servers can avail themselves of various specialized IRC hosting services if their projects are relatively small scale. It is technically possible to open an IRC channel from almost anywhere, but if you want to maintain IRC channels over time using bots or other automated organization programs you may run into trouble with hosting providers, even ones offering dedicated servers, who disallow such applications due to potential security weakness associated with them, such as denial of service attacks used to bog down targeted servers.
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