Nick And Channel Delays

IRCNet

IRCD 2.9 and later (Ircnet’s continued development of the original IRCD) use a “delay” mechanism to prevent colliding of nicknames and channels during netsplits, rather than the more familiar timestamp mechanism in use within most other IRCDs.

Delays are a minimum of 15 minutes from the time the nickname or channel was first “lost” in a split.

If a nickname or channel is unavailable due to delay, users will receive a 437 (ERR_UNAVAILRESOURCE) numeric, with a message that “Nick/channel is temporarily unavailable”

Nicknames

Nicknames are locked if they are “lost” from the network as a result of a network split. They will also be locked if killed by an operator, or by a collision.

Note: 2.11 added UIDs - users are no longer killed in a nickname collision, instead they will revert to their globally unique ID.

Channels

Channels are locked when they become empty as a result of, or during a split. If the split ends, or the delay period expires, they are unlocked.

Weaknesses

• Collisions may still be exploited as a result of splits lasting longer than the delay period.
• Nickname collisions are still possible if two users change to a nickname before the change can be fully propagated.
• Opless channels tend to remain permanently opless.

Related Extensions

• Split Mode - a feature where channels can’t be created (or in some cases joined at all) during a split.