IRC-Research / Kajetan Hinner \ IRC-Forschung

 

Statistics on IRC

There has been an article based on these data published at "M/C - a journal of media and culture": http://www.media-culture.org.au/0008/count.html

You can also download a pdf version of this article here.

For daily updated individual usage graphs (user and channels) select from the list below:

  • IRCnet
  • EFnet
  • Freenode
  • Undernet
  • DALnet
  • GalaxyNet
  • Libera Chat
  • Webchat
  •  EU-IRC

    • The following table gives an overview of the maximum user counts in August 2004 compared to the fourth Quarter 2000 and third quarter 1998.

     
    Year
    DALnet
    EFnet
    Galaxy Net
    IRCnet
    MS Chat
    Undernet
    Webchat
    Aug. 2004
    		 36630
    		 106976
    		 13069
    		 118595
    		 n/a
    		 128936
    		 n/a
    Max. 2000
    78333
    63985
    16737
    84231
    15288
    74945
    17724
    3rd Q. 1998
    21000
    37000
    n/a
    24500
    n/a
    24000
    n/a

    Compared to the 200-300 users in 1991 and the 7000 IRC-chatters in 1994 the growth is certainly extraordinary.

    The following Top-Channel Statistics were created with hourly data from Feb., 13th, 1998 to July, 12th, 1998. All channels with at least 50 members were counted each hour. Ranks are calculated using the mean over all channel-data.

    Top-20 Channels on DALnet (1998)

    1. chatzone 418
    2. mamak 364
    3. funfactor 305
    4. kampung 308
    5. teens 280
    6. cyberchat 203
    7. pakistan 202
    8. mexico 226
    9. israel 214
    10. beginner 174
    11. sex 167
    12. sverige 187
    13. sweden 147
    14. quebec 146
    15. india 129
    16. mp3 97
    17. chataway 87
    18. sexpics 87
    19. manila 103
    20. mp3centra 87

    Top-20 Channels on Efnet

    1. warez950 194
    2. win98 167
    3. chatzone 178
    4. mp3 202
    5. warezware 195
    6. warez950- 129
    7. warez98 111
    8. teen 102
    9. wareznt 88
    10. teenchat 98
    11. icons_of_ 79
    12. windows98 85
    13. asian 100
    14. sexpics 75
    15. freewarez 99
    16. freebsd 75
    17. vivo98 79
    18. windowsnt 68
    19. funfactor 93
    20. chinese 77

    Top-20 Channels on IRCnet

    1. italia 320
    2. flirt.de 167
    3. eu-opers 87
    4. lahti 81
    5. mp3 86
    6. chataway 88
    7. freenet 93
    8. flirtcafe 99
    9. 42 64
    10. krakow 73
    11. cyberchat 117
    12. chatzone 108
    13. unix 58
    14. linux 62
    15. cs 96
    16. russian 74
    17. funfactor 85
    18. sverige 119
    19. cyberfrie 64
    20. vlaandere 73

    Top-20 Channels on Undernet

    1. hellas 126
    2. istanbul 152
    3. sexe 152
    4. quebec 210
    5. filipino 119
    6. chatzone 278
    7. burgaz 127
    8. montreal 335
    9. quebec25+ 157
    10. dominican 102
    11. france 166
    12. italia 95
    13. piyasa 93
    14. 100%%pret 68
    15. catalunya 93
    16. mexico 216
    17. cyprus 230
    18. cebu 122
    19. funfactor 222
    20. 0!!!!!!!! 57

    Top Channels on the four major IRC networks

    1. chatzone 418 DALnet
    2. mamak 364 DALnet
    3. montreal 335 Undernet
    4. italia 320 IRCnet
    5. kampung 308 DALnet
    6. funfactor 305 DALnet
    7. teens 280 DALnet
    8. chatzone 278 Undernet
    9. cyprus 230 Undernet
    10. mexico 226 DALnet
    11. funfactor 222 Undernet
    12. mexico 216 Undernet
    13. israel 214 DALnet
    14. quebec 210 Undernet
    15. cyberchat 203 DALnet
    16. mp3 202 EFnet
    17. pakistan 202 DALnet
    18. warezware 195 EFnet
    19. warez950 194 EFnet
    20. sverige 187 DALnet

    Nice graphics (per week, month, year, server, etc.). Graphs are updated regularly!

  • IRCnet
  • EFnet
  • Freenode
  • Undernet
  • DALnet
  • GalaxyNet
  • Libera Chat
  • Webchat
  •  EU-IRC

    • How those figures were created

    With various methods I was monitoring the big four networks (see my IRC page for history and details).
    Right now a Perl script is doing the job: Socip.pl. Every five minutes data is fed into a Round-Robin-Database.
    Another script. Socip_graphs.pl uses MRTG to calculate graphs and finally creates a webpage.

    The main server creating those figures and running the necessary programs has been located from 2002 to December 2007 at University of Mainz, Sociology Dept., it was working with FreeBSD 6.1. It finally died because of a power supply failure.
    But all those data would not have been possible without my "Bompf"-Server at the University of Rostock in Northern Germany (Sociology Department), who ran from 1998 until April 2003 and did a good job. It was a Pentium 5/120 from HP running Debian Linux (2.2 Potato).
    Since a couple of years the responsible server is located in St.Louis, MO, operating system is Debian Linux stable (Buster - started with Etch, former server was located since 2007 in Frankfurt, Germany).

    Useful Links

  • My IRC page
  • My programs page, where you will find some perl scripts