On Wed, 3 May 2000, Joerg Reuter wrote:
> It starts with the question: which IRC? The RFC is long obsoleted
> by the actual implementations. To make it worse, those implementations
> are incompatible with each other, you've got to stick with one
> server type.
At least the client protocol is pretty much the same, and we have loads
of fancy clients which work with all of the servers. We've got
incompatible conversd servers running too, with different feature sets,
which renders some of the nice features unusable (take channel modes for
example).
> The main problems with IRC as we know it:
>
> - does not allow loops (but at least it doesn't render the whole
> network unusable if they occur)
Backup links work out quite well if well-coordinated (ha ha,
coordination, that's what we're good at 8-)
> - complicated to configure
? Not very.
> - only suited for small networks: at least for the Undernet server
> every Hub server needs an entry in all other nodes' config
Hm, ircnet has over 70 servers now, and the above isn't true for the
original ircd code tree:
# H: [OPTIONAL]. These lines define who you permit to act as a "hub" to
# you (that is, who you permit to connect non-leafed servers to you).
and i guess you could say something like H: .. * ... to allow all, or
remove this feature, but i doubt you'd want to, if you want to do any
coordination at all.
> - low acceptence by the users as long as convers at least somewhat
> works
This will apply for whatever that is not conversd or compatible to it
(and if you are compatible and run a gateway you're restricted on
features).
> IRC isn't much better than convers, hence a new protocol would be
> the best sollution. At least it could take care of the loop issue.
At least it _is_ _there_ and proven to work for some really large
networks when compared to any of ours. The code is there and supported by
loads of people already.
Of course, if there are enough people interested and wanting to devote
the time to design and code a new one, i'm not against it, because coding
is the fun part in all of this. 8-) I just think that you could make irc
work quite well for us with a relatively little work. It wouldn't work out
for the radio-based EU convers network though.
- Hessu
