poul-irc.rst

IRC

Disadvantages of IRC

• It is only real-time. No support for offline messages or history of channels.

Current problems with our IRC server setup

1. Invalid (expired) server certificate.
2. Impossible to reach from the Polimi network due to the firewall.
3. Connection limit from the same ip address.
4. Not accessible from Tor.

Note: all these problems, except from number 2, are actually problems of the Azzurra Network that could be solved by switching to an other network.

Possible solutions

1. Switch to an other IRC Network that has not the problems listed above. Setup some kind of proxying functionality to let the users connected from the Polimi network access the IRC server.
2. Setup our own IRC server. The server could listen on a port reachable from the Polimi network.
3. Convince the AzzurraNet administrators to solve the previosuly mentioned problems and make the server reachable from the Polimi net as explained in solution 1.

Bonus points

Webchat

Setup a decent webchat that can be used by whom has not an irc client installed. Irc Shout would be perfect if I could connect to it with my IRC. client, acting like a bouncer with a (really cool) web interface.

Improve IRC for mobile phones

Find a better way to use IRC from mobile clients. For example a mobile application could establish a connection to a backend (which in turn keeps an always-on connection to IRC) only when active (i.e. in the foreground) and receive push notification on mentions and private messages.

Free the POuL members from the Great Firewall

Being able to connect to any TCP/UDP port would be useful for a lot of things other than IRC. We could setup a VPN for the members or some other kind of proxying that allows to bypass the firewall.