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

Internet chat Online chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet that offers a real-time transmission of text messages from sender to receiver. Chat messages are generally short in order to enable other participants to respond quickly. Ther ...

program and its associated

protocol Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states * Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state * Etiquette, a code of personal behavior Science and technology ...

. 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 Ham ...

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. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentu ...

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

, Georgia Tech,

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, MIT,

University of New Mexico The University of New Mexico (UNM; es, Universidad de Nuevo México) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1889, it is the state's flagship academic institution and the largest by enrollment, with over 25,400 ...

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

, UC Santa Cruz, and

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

. Fn, based on a

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

1989 Loma Prieta earthquake The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake occurred on California's Central Coast on October 17 at local time. The shock was centered in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Santa Cruz County, approximately northeast of Santa Cruz on a section of t ...

- 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

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

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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.

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