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IRCd

An IRCd, short for Internet Relay Chat daemon, is server software that implements the IRC protocol, enabling people to talk to each other via the Internet (exchanging textual messages in real time). It is distinct from an IRC bot that connects outbound to an IRC channel.

The server listens to connections from IRC clients on a set of TCP ports. When the server is part of an IRC network, it also keeps one or more established connections to other servers/daemons.

The term ircd originally referred to only one single piece of software, but it eventually became a generic reference to any implementation of an IRC daemon. However, the original version is still distributed under the same name, and this article discusses both uses.

History

The original IRCd was known as 'ircd', and was authored by Jarkko Oikarinen (WiZ on IRC) in 1988.[10][11] He received help from a number of others, such as Markku Savela (msa on IRC), who helped with the 2.2+msa release, etc.
In its first revisions, IRC did not have many features that are taken for granted today, such as named channels and channel operators. Channels were numbered - channel 4 and channel 57, for example - and the channel topic described the kind of conversation that took place in the channel. One holdover of this is that joining channel 0 causes a client to leave all the channels it is presently on: "CHANNEL 0" being the original command to leave the current channel.
The first major change to IRC, in version 2.5, was to add named channels - "+channels". "+channels" were later replaced with "#channels" in version 2.7, numeric channels were removed entirely and channel bans (mode +b) were implemented.
Around version 2.7, there was a small but notable dispute[clarification needed], which led to ircu - the Undernet fork of ircd.
irc2.8 added "&channels" (those that exist only on the current server, rather than the entire network) and "!channels" (those that are theoretically safe from suffering from the many ways that a user could exploit a channel by "riding a netsplit"), and is the baseline release from which nearly all current implementations are derived.
Around 2.8 came the concept of nick and channel delay, a system designed to help curb abusive practices such as takeovers and split riding. This was not agreed on by the majority of modern IRC (EFnet, DALnet, Undernet, etc.) - and thus, 2.8 was forked into a number of different daemons using an opposing theory known as TS - or time stamping, which stored a unique time stamp with each channel or nickname on the network to decide which was the 'correct' one to keep.

SSL

Some IRCd support TLS, for those who don't, it is still possible to use TLS via Stunnel. The unofficial, but most often used port for SSL IRCd connections is 6697. More recently, as a security enhancement and usability enhancement, various client and server authors have begun drafting a standard known as the STARTTLS standard which allows for SSL and plain text connections to co-exist on the same TCP port.

IPv4 and IPv6

IRC daemons support IPv4, and some also support IPv6. In general, the difference between IPv6 and IPv4 connections to IRC is purely academic and the service operates in much the same manner through either protocol.

Clustering

Large IRC networks consist of multiple servers for horizontal scaling purposes. There are several IRC protocol extensions for these purposes.

IRCX

IRCX (Internet Relay Chat eXtensions) is an extension to the IRC protocol developed by Microsoft

G:Line

A G-line or global kill line (also written G:line) is a global network ban applied to a user; the term comes from Undernet but on DALnet a similar concept known as an AKill was used.

G-lines are sometimes stored in the configuration file of the IRCd, although some networks, who handle K-lines through the IRC services, prefer to have them stored in their service's configuration files. Whenever a G-lined person attempts to connect to the IRC network, either the services or the IRC daemon will automatically disconnect the client, often displaying a message explaining the "reasoning" behind the ban.

G-lines are a variant of K-lines, which work in much the same way, except K-lines only disconnect clients on one server of the network. G-lines are normally applied to a user who has received a K-line on one server but continues to abuse the network by connecting via a different server. G-lines are often regarded as an extreme measure, only to be used in cases of repeated abuse when extensive attempts have been made to reason with the offending user. Therefore, especially on larger networks, often only very high ranking global IRC operators are permitted to set them, while K-lines, which are mostly regarded as a local affair, are left to the operators of the individual server in the network.

G-lines also work slightly differently from K-lines. G-lines are typically set as *@IPaddress or *@host, with the first being the better option. G-lines do still wait for an ident response from the connecting user (if specified in the banmask), but immediately close the socket once the user's IP address is compared to the G-line list and a match is found. If the *@host option is used, the server must conduct a reverse DNS lookup on the user and then compare the returned host to the hosts in the G-line list. This results in delay, and, if the DNS doesn't return correct results, the banned user may still get on the network.