Linux.com: Pushing the Limits of IRC

“IRC which stands for Internet Relay Chat, is a protocol used so
people across the Internet can chat in real time. If you want more
information on IRC basics, check out Tom Dominico’s small
tutorial….”

“My only problem is, to this day, I still can’t get the IRC
administrators to recognize Linux as a feasible operating system on
which to run an IRC server. I am told that Linux can’t properly
handle the memory spikes that an IRC server might give off. I get
told that it breaks down when a server gets a large influx of new
clients. I get told that Linux won’t make it as a platform for IRC
servers.”

“Enter David “driz” Friedman. David is a volunteer here at
Linux.com, and he also runs one of the largest IRC servers on
DALnet, which is also the largest IRC network around. David also
runs Linux on his IRC server. David is the admin of the server
twisted.ma.us.dal.net, and at its peak, it has carried 38,435
clients. As far as my research has shown, I believe this is the
heaviest client count that an IRC server has held to date on any
network or on any operating system. So what does it take to power a
machine that serves so many people at the same time? The
twisted.ma.us.dal.net (henceforth known as “twisted”) server is
powered by an AMD Thunderbird 900MHz processor running along side
of 512 megabytes of RAM.”

Complete
Story