Optimizations for IRC Protocol?

epiphani asks: "Over the past few years IRC has grown substantially. With this growth, many issues are arising with bandwidth usage. I've started rewriting the client-side protocol that has remained completely unchanged since the publication of RFC1459. During my conversations with various client authors and coders from the major networks, the suggestion has been made to remove the nickname as the unique namespace, replacing it with an ICQ-like UIN. This would mean the same nickname could appear more than once on a network. This would also apply to channel names, just as EFnet is planning to do in hybrid7, with Vchans. Does anyone have any suggestions to optimization of the current client-side protocol?"

Comments

Re:The power of EFnet

[The-Bus]

Efnet could do well by increasing their max nickname length to something a bit user-friendly. Currently, it is 9 characters. I have been on some IRC servers where the norm is much higher and you chat with people who use nicks like MolotovCocktail. While this is a somewhat stupid solution, even an increase by 2 characters will increase available names ten- or twenty-fold.

Netsplits are certainly interesting but very much a pain in the ass if they happen for too long. How they can be good, I have no idea.

ICQ-like UIN?

[_outcat_]

Using an ICQ-like UIN would take some getting used to. I am a rather major Undernet junkie (check my bio for details) and my own frequently-visited channels had to make some major adjustments after the big Undernet attacks earlier this year.

For one thing, it's much easier to type a nickname. If we go through a netsplit (big surprise on Undernet :P !) and some op sees the channel with 37 people in it and the channel limit set to 90, they might semi-cluelessly change it to 40. Then people start coming back in from the split, and pretty soon the channel is full. If I were caught in the split and couldn't get into the channel, I want to /msg an op in channel to please raise the limit. I don't want to have to /msg 18 different people on Undernet with the same nick, nor do I want to look up an op's UIN. Something would have to be done to streamline the process, and it would require massive changes in IRC clients.

Previously mentioned on this discussion, however, was mentioned that on ICQ, one can sometimes have one's UIN assailed by harrassants, and all a person can do is get a new UIN for peace. Well, in my experience, the /silence features that Undernet has, at least, are a bit more robust than ICQ's...not only do you not see attackers or irritatants, but they don't even get through the server to you (unlike /ignore--you can still feel the effects of a flood attack.) All you have to know is your harrassant's user@host or even just a pattern in their nick--I used /silence !~??*@* for a while because of floodbots with a broken ident and two-letter semi-random username...

I don't know. I'm just throwing out ideas. It might work, but it would take a lot more getting used to than some people on IRC might like. I wouldn't mind it, personally, but the UIN -- nickname issue would need to go smoothly..

Just my two cents.