Internet Relay Chat on Jove

By Dr. Philip Baczewski, Associate Director of Academic Computing

As of the upgrade of jove.acs.unt.edu to Solaris version 2.6 on January 7,1998, an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client was no longer installed on the system. IRC users instead are urged to take advantage of available client programs for Windows PCs or Macintosh Computers. The IRC client program was not restored to Jove for a number of reasons, including the following:

1. Resources: the mission of Jove is primarily to provide student E-mail and Web publishing services. E-mail in particular consumes a great amount of Jove's resources. Optional programs like IRC take away from resources needed for serving the E-mail needs of a large population of students.
   
   
2. Security: the culture of IRC users and the features of IRC clients, make it very easy for someone external to UNT to take advantage of a novice IRC user to gain unauthorized access to UNT UNIX systems. Such unauthorized access jeopardizes services for the 20,000 students who depend on Jove for reliable E-mail services.
   
   
3. Mission: E-mail in particular, has become central to the mission of the University in carrying out instruction and research. While we allow use of UNT E-mail services for casual messages to family and friends, the main purpose of providing E-mail is in support of learning and/or scholarly research. IRC has not been shown to be central to these activities which lie at the core of UNT's mission.
   
   
4. Strategy: In order to maximize central computing resources and provide an effective Internet service for novices and experts alike, we have adopted a strategy of supporting client/server programs for Internet access. A number of good and powerful programs for E-mail, Web publishing, and many other Internet activities exist for Windows PCs, Macintoshes, and freeware systems like LINUX. Moving client activity off of Jove will maximize the server resources available for our large population of Internet users.
   

This semester (spring, 1998) we have not actively prevented individuals from acquiring and running copies of IRC on Jove. As of May 15, 1998, however, the Computing Center will take more active steps to prevent IRC clients from running on Jove. This does not mean that IRC will be unavailable to those accessing the Internet via UNT. Several free or shareware IRC clients are available for Windows PCs and Macintoshes (including MIRC for Windows and chatnet for Macintosh). These programs can be found by searching the Web sites, www.filez.com and www.shareware.com.

Questions or comments about this change in services may be directed to Dr. Philip Baczewski, Associate Director of Academic Computing Services by sending E-mail to baczewski@unt.edu. n