Saturday, December 21, 2002
Merry Christmas!

  History of IRC
IRC://irc.Zoite.net
Staff@Zoite.net




Index:
	1. Introduction
	2. What is IRC?
	3. Why was it created?

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1. Introduction

This document describes what IRC is, how it was created, why it was
created, the original authors and a few other things.

=====================================================================
2. What is IRC?

IRC stands for "Internet Relay Chat". It's a protocol used mainly by
chatting communities to interact. It is used world wide and is the
most popular chat protocol.

=====================================================================
3. Why was it created?

IRC was created by Jarkko Oikarinen. He was working in the University
of Oulu during summer, 1988. They didn't assign him much to do; so he
decided to create a communications program. At first, it was meant to
make OuluBox (a public BBS) a bit more usable. The purpose was to
allow USENET news groups to have real-time conversations/discussions.
On August, in 1988, IRC was born. The exact date is unknown.
The first IRC servers were spread around Finland.
Since the connections outside Finland didn't exist yet or weren't 
working properly, people outside Finland weren't very happy about
the whole "IRC" thing.
After a while, some students at MIT started an IRCD and told Jarkko
about it. They linked their servers to the Finnish IRC network.
After that, IRC grew very quickly; people liked it and started
running servers around the world.
The first IRC server was tolsun.oulu.fi.

EOF