EFnet History

• Early IRC history

  
  Dates by Ian, comments by Helen (this is a very rough cut)
  Send additions/corrections to frechett@colorado.edu
  summer 1988 - irc2.0 released
  
  this is Jarkko's tale of the releasing of irc
  
  
  From jto@rieska.oulu.fi Fri Dec 10 18:23:37 1993
  Date: Fri, 10 Dec 93 14:46:17 +0200
  From: jto@rieska.oulu.fi (Jarkko Oikarinen)
  To: hrose@eff.org
  Subject: IRC History...
  Content-Length: 3752
  
  Included is a history of IRC as I wrote maybe 3 or 4 years ago.
  Hope it helps!
  
    I don't know if this helps much. I hope I remember things correctly and
    apologise people whom I have left out and they had deserved to be in here.
   
    I was working in the Department of Information Processing Science in
    University of Oulu during summer'88. I guess they didn't have much for me
    to do. I was administring the department's sun server, but it didn't
    take all time. So I started doing a communications program, which was
    meant to make OuluBox (a Public Access BBS running on host tolsun.oulu.fi,
    administered by me) a little more usable. The purpose was to allow
    USENET News-kind of discussion and groups there in addition to real time
    discussions and other BBS related stuff.
   
    Jyrki Kuoppala (jkp@cs.hut.fi) had implemented rmsg program for sending
    messages to people on other machines. It didn't have the channel concept
    implemented (though it supported it), so it was mainly used for
    person-to-person communications.
   
    Another already existing simple multiuser chat program on OuluBox was
    MUT (MultiUser Talk), it was written by Jukka Pihl (pihl@rieska.oulu.fi).
    That program has a bad habit of not working properly, so in order to
    fix this, the first implemented thing of this BBS plan was IRC.
   
    The birthday of IRC was in August 1988. The exact date is unknown,
    at the end of the month anyways.
   
    Bitnet Relay Chat was a good inspiration for IRC. When IRC started
    occasionally having more than 10 users, I asked some friends of mine to
    start running irc servers in south Finland, mainly in Tampere University
    of Technology and Helsinki University of Technology. Some other
    universities soon followed. Markku J{rvinen (mta@cc.tut.fi) improved
    the irc client (there was only one at that time) to support some emacs
    editing commands. At that time it was obvious that adding BBS like
    functions to the program was not a good idea, it's better to have
    one program for one purpose. So the BBS extension idea was given up
    and just IRC stayed.
   
    IRC was well spread in Finland. I contacted some friends of mine through
    BITNET Relay and asked if they would try this program. Internet connections
    did not yet work from Finland to other countries, so they could not
    connect to the Finnish network (which I suppose was the reason for them not
    being very enthusiastic about irc).
   
    Internet connections to states started working (I don't anymore remember when).
    I answered to some news articles where people asked for multiuser chat
    programs. I didn't get replies.
   
    At mit, there was the legendary ai.ai.mit.edu machine running ITS.
    I got an account there and learned to use it a little bit. Enough to
    know how to chat with people. From there I got the first IRC user outside
    Scandinavia, Mike Jacobs used IRC through OuluBox (he did not have account
    on any Unix machines).
   
    Through ai.ai.mit.edu I got to know Vijay Subramaniam (I hope I spelled
    that correctly :-). I had given IRC to him and not heard of him for some
    time. Then I got mail messages from Jeff Trim (used to be
    jtrim@orion.cair.du.edu, University of Denver, current address unknown)
    David Bleckmann (bleckmd@jacobs.cs.orst.edu) and Todd Ferguson
    (melvin@jacobs.cs.orst.edu, Oregon State University).
    Vijay had given IRC to them and they had started
    ircd on their machines (orion.cair.du.edu and jacobcs.cs.orst.edu,
    if I remember correctly) and wanted to connect to Finnish irc network.
    After that some other people started running IRC, and the number
    of servers grew quickly.
   
    The first IRC server (and still running) was tolsun.oulu.fi
   
    I have no idea of the latest one..
  
  
  

  1. Aug 88 - first irc server tolsun.oulu.fi
     
  2. 89 - ircII released by Michael Sandrof (BigCheese)
     
  3. Mar 90 - 2.2msa4
     
  4. Jun 90 - 2.5beta ("+" named channels)
     
  5. Jun 90 - ircII 1.90a
     
  6. Jul 90 - 12 users on 38 servers
     
  7. Aug 90 - IRC splits into EFnet (Eris Free) and Anet (Anarchy)
     
  8. Sep 90 - 117 servers
     
  9. Sep 90 - 41 users 86 servers
     
  10. Nov 90 - version 2.6 released
      
  11. Dec 90 - ircII 2.0beta10
      
  12. late 90 - Darren Reed (Avalon) adds hash tables when IRC stops under load
      
  13. xxxx 91 - Troy Rollo (Troy) takes over ircII development
      
  14. Jan 91 - The Gulf war.. usage goes from peak 100 to peak 300
      
  15. Jan 91 - version 2.6.1 adds flow control..
      
  16. Feb 91 - bandwidth NSF stats record 8.8 Gigs for month of Feb
      
  17. Mar 91 - NSF is all T1
      
  18. Mar 91 - 2.6pre18 (famous for running on services.de long after 2.7 release)
      
  19. Mar 91 - bandwidth 200k/2 hours
      
  20. Mar 91 - 135 servers 69 us 66 non us
      
  21. Apr 91 - 240 users median
      
  22. Jun 91 - Cori booted off
      
  23. Jul 91 - The.PLAN
      
  24. Aug 91 - ircII 2.1.3
      
  25. Oct 91 - 399 users 120 servers 44 opers (hits 500)
      
  26. Nov 91 - ircII 2.1.5pre3
      
  27. Sum 92 - ICMP attacks (cert advisory July 92)
      
  28. Jan 93 - Matthew Green (phone) takes over ircII development
      
  29. xxxx 94 - irc.colorado.edu hits 1000 users
      
  30. late 94 - IRC hits 5,000 users
      
  31. mid 95 - irc.escape.com hits 2000 users
      
  32. Oct 95 - IRC hits 15,000 users
      
  33. Feb 96 - Possibly largest channel ever. Id releases Qtest. #Quake sees 1556
      users
      
  34. May 96 - Europe and the US EFnet splits into two separate networks as a result
      of a disagreement on whether the network should use TS or Nick Delay as a means
      to prevent nick collisions.
      
  35. Apr 97 - IRC hits 30,000 users
      
  36. Jun 97 - irc-e.primenet.com and irc1.phoenix.net both break 3000 clients
      
  37. Oct 97 - "smurf.c"
      
      1. multi-broadcast ICMP attack posted to Bugtraq
         Denial of Service attacks on EFnet servers hit an all-time high
         
  38. Jan 98 - IRC hits 40,000 users
      
  39. Mar 98 - irc.blackened.com breaks 4000 clients
      
  40. Apr 98 - irc.blackened.com breaks 5000 clients
      
  41. May 98 - irc.blackened.com breaks 6000 clients
      
  42. Jun 98 - irc.blackened.com breaks 7000 clients
      
  43. Sep 98 - irc.blackened.com breaks 8000 clients
      
  44. Feb 99 - irc.idle.net breaks 9000 clients
      
  45. Feb 99 - irc.idle.net breaks 10000 clients
      
  46. Feb 99 - IRC hits 50,000 users
      
  47. Jul 99 - irc.freei.net breaks 11000 clients
      
  48. Aug 99 - irc.concentric.net breaks 12000 clients
      
  49. Aug 99 - irc.concentric.net breaks 13000 clients
      
  50. Nov 99 - EFnet breaks 60,000 clients
      
  51. Nov 99 - irc.core.com breaks 14000 clients
      
  52. Dec 99 - irc.core.com breaks 15000 clients
      
  53. Dec 99 - irc.core.com breaks 16000 clients
      

  
  
  
  
  Need dates for
  - IRC gets 10 servers
  see my note above from Jarkko
  
  - IRC gets 100 servers
  
  the very first time it was done was May 1990, but it soon dropped down
  again. It was before the split and anyone could set up a server so we set
  up a few on machines at UC to bring the total up to 100 :-)
  [before EFnet/Anet]
  
  - IRC gets 200 servers (it has been over 200.. but has dropped since)
  - irc2.4 (numeric only channels)
  
  here's a bit of history...
  
  I first started using irc in January or February of 1990. At the time the
  latest server revs were 2.2PL0 and 2.2PL1. msa and Chelsea Ashley Dyerman
  were working on the 2.3 release ... there was a disagreement between them
  about the copyrights. Chelsea had everything copyrighted by the IRCDC (IRC
  Development Consortium). People told her they didn't like that, it should
  be GPL'ed. She released 2.3alpha with those copyrights. Very few sites ran
  it as it didn't offer much over 2.2PL1.
  
  At the same time, msa was doing his own work. He added very handy things
  like /whowas, nick chase kill, wallops (later removed), and remote /away
  propogation. He had several releases, the most stable being 2.2msa4 and
  2.2msa9. 2.2msa10 eventually turned into 2.4 (2.3 was "tainted" by
  Chelsea).
  
  Jarkko came along and did a bit of cleanup on 2.4 (which was stable in and
  of itself) and released 2.4.1.
  
  - irc2.5
  
  Armin did 2.5 alpha, and then Jarkko took it over, with his idiotic 2.5+
  release. msa (I believe) did 2.5.1 ... then Tom Hopkins and some other BU
  folks (myself included) collaborated on 2.5.1.bu.10, possibly the most
  stable server version to date :-) No new features went into 2.5.1.bu.10
  (also called 2.5.2 in the docs, but it was never released as such), just
  bug fixes. I wish we did that nowadays :-)
  
  - irc2.6 + channels (still have numerics) # channels added later on
  
  Armin started the 2.6 release and then Avalon took it over.
  
  - irc2.7 # channels replace + channels and numerics go away forever
  
  2.7 was a nice cleanup release. People tried to do things a bit more by
  the book. ircd was put through a saber C check (and bullied into
  compliance :-)
  
  Bans were added to the server in 2.7. In 2.6 you could kick a user out but
  had to rekick or go +i to stop them from rejoining.
  
  - irc2.8 & channels..
  - irc2.9 + channels are back, sorta
  
  Read the operlist archives on ftp.kei.com:/pub/irc/mailing-lists
  
  USBIC, planned in 1993, never passed. Again, more archives on
  ftp.kei.com/pub/irc
  
  
  Again, I really suggest you look at the operlist and irclist archives on
  ftp.kei.com/pub/irc/mailing-lists -- it covers most of these issues.
  
  - WALLOPS removed
  
  Again, the dates should be in the archives
  
  - MODES added
  
  modes were added with + channels.