(c) Dr Paul Kinsler. [Acknowledgements & Feedback]
or: Why is Internet Chat so slow today?
Lag is not caused by problems with the IRC software, excessive network traffic, undergraduates ftp'ing pornographic jpg files from distant archive sites, or the CIA and MI5 scanning all the network traffic for subversive material.
Lag is caused by the Lag Monster. Do not listen to anyone who claims otherwise.
IRC is a network of servers to which people connect their client programs. Lag is the delay between when you type something and when others see it, due mainly to a delay in communication between servers. A netsplit is when the connection between servers is broken, splitting IRC up into two separate IRC networks.
The net is made up of interconnecting pipes of various sizes, and all the data being sent is carried by tiny little multicoloured tropical fish swimming along them. When too much data is being sent at once, all the little fish get crowded together and sometimes even collide. This makes the little fish very angry, and they begin to pray to their terrible God, the Lag Monster. They pray that all the other little fish, particularly ones of a different colour, will get devoured by this horrible and multiheaded serpent.
The Lag Monster itself is very lazy, and would rather just sleep. When billions of tiny fish start praying, especially the tropical ones which have annoyingly squeaky voices, the terrible din gives the Lag Monster a shocking headache. In order to remove this distraction, the Lag Monster finds the pipe or pipes with the most brightly coloured and loudest fish and gobbles them all up.
Now, when the fish carrying your data get eaten, your first response is to curse, and send another school to replace them. This sends larger numbers of tiny tropical fish rushing down the pipes. But now not only are there fish in there, but also an enraged Lag Monster. Consequently the fish crash into each other even more, and so they all pray harder, louder, and in even more squeaky voices, whipping the mighty Lag Monster into bloodthirsty frenzy of apocalyptic proportions.
The moral of the story is simple. If the Lag Monster is eating all your pretty little coloured fish, give up for a while. Switched-fish networks behave very badly when pushed near to their capacity, so retrying is only going to make things worse until the fish can calm down, and swim along nicely without having to dodge those other nasty fish with the bad colour schemes, especially those whose fins are also the wrong size or shape.
IRC works in real time, or at least tries to. When the Lag Monster is awake, this can means that there can be several minutes delay between when you type something, and when whoever you are talking to will see it. The longest Lag Monster I've ever seen was about 15 minutes from end to end, and the most confusing was once when it was 10 minutes long when measured from the USA to Australia, but was only tiny when measured the other way. The length of the Lag Monster can be measured using the /ping < nick > command.
Sometimes the Lag Monster gets so big it blocks up the pipes completely, and any fish that try to get past are immediately eaten. If all the fish belonging to an IRC server get eaten, it loses contact with the other servers. This is called a 'netsplit' - because the Lag Monster is behaving just like a gigantic fishing net and catching all the fish.
The best way to avoid the depradations of the Lag Monster is to either:
(
Bots,
IRC index,
My homepage
)
Date=19990210 19961004 Author=P.Kinsler Created=1995
LOGBUG