IRC: everything is timestamped to the subsecond. Any drifting causes channel tak...

fanf2 · on July 23, 2014

Your comment is very surprising. I don't see how clock drift can cause the problems you describe. There is no timestamping in the IRC protocol.

You can ask for a server's local time, but that is just for information.

There is a recently-added timestamp extension, but that seems to be to correct for delays so clients can record logs correctly. It is not for keeping the IRC network together.

superpatosainz · on July 23, 2014

Yes, there is. Just not in the client side, it's server-to-server, and due to the centralised nature of IRC, it's critical.

For example, here's a paragraph from the UnrealIRCd server protocol (http://www.unrealircd.com/files/docs/technical/serverprotoco...):

> Unreal is very time-dependant. Users and channels, for example, are timestamped, and if server clocks are not synchronized properly, things can go very wrong very fast. See http://vulnscan.org/UnrealIrcd/faq/#67 for more information on this. Note that there is a slight difference between server time and what is actually reported by the UNIX date command or by the C time() function.

The other major side of IRC server protocol is the TS6 protocol (You can see it by yourself at http://irc-wiki.org/IRCd_Comparison). TS stands for TimeStamp, and you can see how critical timestamps are at https://github.com/avenj/irc-server-pluggable/blob/master/do... and https://github.com/atheme/charybdis/blob/master/doc/technica.... You can see TS are what control almost everything related to nicks, channels and their properties.

Before the implementation of TimeStamps and Services, it was really easy to abuse netsplits to take over channels and people's nicks.

There's a complete explanation at http://codeidol.com/internet/irc/The-IRC-Protocol/Timestamp-... (and of course, a Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat#Timestampin...).