In November 1988, IRC had spread across the Internet and in the middle of 1989, there were some 40 servers worldwide.
In August 1990 the first major disagreement took place in the IRC world.
The "A-net" (Anarchy net) included a server named eris.
It was all open, required no passwords and had no limit on the number of connects.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is an application layer protocol that facilitates communication in the form of text.
The chat process works on a client/server networking model.
Another fork effort, the first that really made a big and lasting difference, was initiated by 'Wildthang' in the U. October 1992 (it forked off the EFnet ircd version 2.8.10).
It was meant to be just a test network to develop bots on but it quickly grew to a network "for friends and their friends".
Once ANet disbanded, the name EFnet became meaningless, and once again it was the one and only IRC network.
DALnet ircd modifications were made by Alexei "Lefler" Kosut.
DALnet was thus based on the undernet ircd server, although the DALnet pioneers were EFnet abandoners.
The first part he implemented was the chat part, which he did with borrowed parts written by his friends Jyrki Kuoppala and Jukka Pihl.
The first IRC network was running on a single server named fi.