Internet Citizen's Band (better known as ICB) is an early

Internet chat Online chat is any direct text-, audio- or video-based (webcams), one-on-one or one-to-many (group) chat (formally also known as synchronous conferencing), using tools such as instant messengers, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), talkers and possibly ...

program and its associated

protocol Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics) Protocol originally (in Late Middle English, c. 15th century) meant the minutes or logbook taken at a meeting, upon which an agreement was based. The term now commonly refers to ...

. It was released in 1989.History of ICB
accessed November 2, 2007 ICB is typically served on

port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Hamburg, Manch ...

7326.

History

The first version of ICB was a program called "Forumnet" or "fn", written by

University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a Public University, public Land-grant University, land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky, United States. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical ...

IT staffer Sean Carrick Casey. It was widely used at the

Georgia Tech The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Established in 1885, it has the lar ...

UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

University of New Mexico The University of New Mexico (UNM; ) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. Founded in 1889 by the New Mexico Territorial Legislature, it is the state's second oldest university, a flagship university in th ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland, California is part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was relocated to Oakland in ...

UC Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located in Monterey Bay ...

, and

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

. Fn, based on a

MUD Mud (, or Middle Dutch) is loam, silt or clay mixed with water. Mud is usually formed after rainfall or near water sources. Ancient mud deposits hardened over geological time to form sedimentary rock such as shale or mudstone (generally cal ...

software program by Casey, established the protocol and clients. Fn was used as a realtime communications channel after the

1989 Loma Prieta earthquake On October 17, 1989, at 5:04 p.m. Pacific Time Zone, PST, the Loma Prieta earthquake occurred at the Central Coast (California), Central Coast of California. The shock was centered in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Santa Cruz Cou ...

- Internet access from hard-hit Santa Cruz returned to service before reliable phone service did. In March 1991 the University of Kentucky changed policy and shut down the fn server. Within 2 months a new server had been created from the client software by another fn user, John Atwood Devries, and was put online now renamed ICB. This new server code, unrelated to the original server except by the common client software source, was then used as the basis of many ICB servers to follow. From 1995 to 2000 the server code was heavily rewritten for stability and additional features by Jon Luini and Michel Hoche-Mong and remains available at the ICB.net web site. ICB is still in operation with a dedicated user base. A variety of clients exist for all major operating systems.

Features

ICB features many standard chat program functions, including channels, private messages, and nickname registration. Most of the common clients support

TCL TCL or Tcl or TCLs may refer to: Business * TCL Technology, a Chinese consumer electronics and appliance company ** TCL Electronics, a subsidiary of TCL Technology * Texas Collegiate League, a collegiate baseball league * Trade Centre Limited ...

scripting of commands and functions. Some clients (principally icbm) support scripting in

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

instead.

Limitations

ICB has never supported multi-server shared groups, so the number of simultaneous users has always been somewhat limited in comparison to more popular chat programs. ICB does not support transferring files or multimedia via the chat program. However, the very restrictive protocol has a very small remote attack surface. The ICB protocol is not

8-bit clean ''8-bit clean'' is an attribute of computer systems, communication channels, and other devices and software, that process 8-bit character encodings without treating any byte as an in-band control code. History Until the early 1990s, many progr ...

References

External links

ICB home page
including links to client and server software
cicb
at GitHub, the most common client

{{Instant messaging Instant messaging protocols Online chat 1989 software