IRC is an open protocol that uses TCP and optionally TLS. An IRC server can connect to other IRC servers to expand the IRC network. Users access IRC networks by connecting a client to a server. There are many client and server implementations, such as mIRC and the Bahamut IRCd. Most IRC servers do not require users to log in, but a user will have to set a nickname before being connected.
IRC was originally a plain text protocol (although later extended), which on request was assigned port 194/TCP by IANA. However, the de facto has always been to run IRC on 6667/TCP and nearby port numbers to avoid having to run the IRCd software with root privileges. It is possible (though quite inconvenient) to use IRC via a basic byte-stream client such as netcat or telnet.
The protocol specified that characters were 8 bit but did not specify the character encoding the text was supposed to use. This can cause problems when users using different clients and/or different platforms want to converse.
All client-to-server IRC protocols in use today are descended from the protocol implemented in the irc2.8 version of the IRC2server, and documented in RFC 1459. Since RFC 1459 was published, the new features in the irc2.10 implementation led to the publication of several revised protocol documents; RFC 2810, RFC 2811, RFC 2812 and RFC 2813, however these protocol changes have not been widely adopted among other implementations.
Although many specifications on the IRC protocol have been published, there is no official specification, as the protocol remains dynamic. Virtually no clients and very few servers rely strictly on the above RFCs as a reference.
