Internet Chat History

Internet Chat Site describes the various key stages as the system of IM came to be widely accepted as a popular average of live communication between the different sites. In other words, explains Internet Chat Site Chat history.

Internet Relay Chat :

One of the main stages in Internet chat history is the introduction of Internet Relay Chat, which was developed by Jarkko Oikarinen in 1988 in Finland. By the year 1989 there were already 40 servers that come with this service. Gradually, the IRC started to gain popularity, and was made available in almost sixty countries.

IRC was born in the summer of 1988 when Jarkko "WiZ" Oikarinen wrote the first IRC client and server at the University of Oulu, Finland (where he works at the Department of Information Processing Science).

Jarkko intended to extend BBS software he managed at tolsun.oulu.fi that allow Usenet news style, real-time discussions and BBS-like functions. The first part he implemented was the chat page, which he did with borrowed parts written by his friends Jyrki Kuoppala and Jukka Pihl. It was originally tested on a single machine, and according to the words from Jarkko itself "The birthday of IRC was in August 1988. The exact date is unknown at the end of the month anyways.." The first IRC server was named tolsun.oulu.fi.

Jyrki Kuoppala pushed Jarkko ask Oulu University for free IRC code so that it can also be run outside of Oulu, and when they finally got it published, Jyrki Kuoppala immediately installed a server (which later became irc.cs.hut.fi). This was the first "IRC network".

Ari Lemmke's own words: "While Jyrki installed irked, I was in the same room, and had nothing to do, so I decided to embark tolsun (IRC server Sun machine in Oulu), and of course got in through a new hole in send mail. Jarkko got some friends in Helsinki and Tampere Universities to start running IRC servers when his number of users increased.

Other universities soon followed. Markku Järvinen contributed to the improvement of the client. At this point, Jarkko realized that the rest of the BBS features probably would not fit into his program!

Jarkko came into contact with the guys at the University of Denver and Oregon State University. They had an IRC network running (they had the program from one of Jarkko's friends, Vijay Subramaniam - the first non-Finnish person to use IRC) and wanted to connect to the Finnish network. IRC then became larger and were used throughout the Finnish National Network - Funet - and then connected Nordunet, the Scandinavian branch of the Internet. In November 1988, IRC had spread across the Internet.

In mid-1989 there were about 40 servers worldwide.

ircII was released in 1989 by Michael Sandrof.

In July 1990, an average of 12 IRC users on 38 servers.

In 1990, a new network set up to develop a new version (2.6) in ircd. The network named ChNet (approximately 25 servers and no users) existed a few months before the disagreement among programmers because it is dissolving.

Other major IM Networks :

A number of other chat programs were also developed in an attempt to replace the IRC. The development of EFnet or Eris Free network was one such attempt, which proved to be short-lived. This was followed by the introduction of TubNet.

Another important network was Undernet network, which attached servers in France, Canada and the USA. However Undernet also had many loopholes and was replaced with a new network called DALnet which was introduced with the aim to improve the chat system. DALnet IRC and proved to be the most viable development of the entire Internet Chat Site.

Important developments :

Unlike earlier, when chatting was only possible between two people, now you can enjoy chatting with several people at a time. Pioneering innovations have further promoted the chat methods and techniques. There are different types of chat enabled in days like Voice Chat and video chat. All these discussions on the Internet Chat History explains how the process of chatting is actually done.