2021-12-23

Modern Wonders 5: Internet Relay Chat

tags: wonders

update: bip is the irc proxy, bup is a backup program. Corrected

These days I followed the call of m15o (of midnight.pub fame) to actually try IRC (internet relay chat) again.

Rekindling IRC

local copy

I had used IRC before, and I found my notes about installing and configuring bip, the irc proxy, which keeps a zombie of me always connected, stores the conversation while I'm offline, and presents the backlog when I reconnect.

So I hang out in this channel dedicated to the patrons of

gemini://midnight.pub

and have a very nice chat with a hand full of identities, apparently distributed over half of the planet. This got me thinking.

Did you ever wonder, how the characters, you or I type in at my computer monitor miraculously show up at the screen of said handfull identities computer screens? In an instant? And by the way, did you ever wonder how the characters you type in on your keyboard actuall show up at the screen to begin with[a]? It's magic! I'm not going to retrace the path in detail. Of the top of my head:

client (emacs/erc) sends the typed string to bip (proxy on another machine in the house)

bip sends the string on to some server which responds to irc.libera.chat

that server sends it on to all interested parties, read connected irc clients or proxies

the receiving client displays the received string onto it's screen area.

And I left out all the nitty gritty details of program requesting a resource via the kernel and being granted access; other program wrapping the string into a nice ethernet package; some small thing puts ethernet package onto ethernet cable; up the hardware/software stack again on the receiving end; same way down, or other way down through another interface to the old telephone copper cable, which is now (ab)used as a high frequency signal carrier of sorts --- we are still only a few hundred meters away from my home --- and with some clever hardware moving this little piece of information through a fairly big number of involved pieces of hardware, until it show up on the internet connection of m15o, for example. Breathtaking!

So, I kindly suggest that you wonder for a minute, how all these items conspire together, to make my message show up remotely:

> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic!

Arthur C. Clarke

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws

Cheers,

~ew

[a] I once read a lengthy post about the path from the keyboard via events and Xorg and fonts server and a phletora of more magic involved, until a glyph representing your key stroke/s is drawn on the screen. But very unfortunately I don't find it any more. Most probably seen via planet.debian.org.

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