3 ms·

I think it's also admirable how quickly libera.chat has grown into a network of over a quarter of freenode's size (26%). freenode.net users as of 18:48 CEST 20

by est31 5y ago

I think it's also admirable how quickly libera.chat has grown into a network of over a quarter of freenode's size (26%). freenode.net users as of 18:48 CEST 2021-05-25: > Current global users 69472, max 85052 libera.chat users as of 15:06 CEST, 2021-05-26: > Current global users 18337, max 18338 In particular, it's larger than OTFC now. Data as of 15:16 CEST, 2021-05-26: > Current global users: 18100 Max: 18101 As for the trends, they look good for libera.chat and bad for freenode. On 2021-05-20, the values were as following for libera.chat: > Current global users 11126, max 11130 And as following for freenode.net: Current global users 77159, max 83476 So freenode lost 7.6 thousand users (9.9%) while libera gained 7.2 thousand users (39%) within the last couple of days.

marcan_42 5y ago
Especially considering that probably most of the current freenode users are idling or even orphaned bouncers. IRC is such that connection counts do not mean an actual person is behind the connection. But obviously everyone who moved to Libera did so actively. 18K active users vs 69K total connections is huge.
rektide 5y ago
you might consider updating your hn profile. ;) (it currently lists oftc & fn)
- est31 5y ago
  Good catch! Done.
WJW 5y ago
Seeing the numbers spelled out like that really drives home how niche IRC has become. The largest network has less than 100k users on it. You can comfortably fit that many connections on a single server these days.
- TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
  The internet has moved to be mobile-first, media-rich, and optionally asynchronous. IRC didn't adapt, though I'm still hopeful for matrix.org.
- nebulous1 5y ago
  I see discord links in a lot of places you would once have seen irc links.
  - est31 5y ago
    discord has 140 million MAUs. IRC as a whole has probably less than 1 million. Still not a fan of it for free software projects to use proprietary chat solutios as the official place for discussion (maybe inofficial).
- dminvs 5y ago
  That's a lot of open sockets for one host
  - WJW 5y ago
    It is indeed a lot, but since Whatsapp manages to get 10 million connections per box [1], 100k seems doable even without insane wizardry. A few years back, I wrote an article on my blog at https://wjwh.eu/posts/2018-10-29-double-hijack.html https://wjwh.eu/posts/2018-10-29-double-hijack.html about keeping 65k connections open in a single Ruby process and that was a hackathon project written in 4 hours. https://medium.com/codingurukul/whatsapp-engineering-inside-2-bdd1ec354748 https://medium.com/codingurukul/whatsapp-engineering-inside-...
fullstop 5y ago
I'm technically on both but really only using Libera.

by est31 5y ago

marcan_42 5y ago

Especially considering that probably most of the current freenode users are idling or even orphaned bouncers. IRC is such that connection counts do not mean an actual person is behind the connection. But obviously everyone who moved to Libera did so actively. 18K active users vs 69K total connections is huge.

rektide 5y ago

you might consider updating your hn profile. ;) (it currently lists oftc & fn)

est31 5y ago
Good catch! Done.

WJW 5y ago

Seeing the numbers spelled out like that really drives home how niche IRC has become. The largest network has less than 100k users on it. You can comfortably fit that many connections on a single server these days.

TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
The internet has moved to be mobile-first, media-rich, and optionally asynchronous. IRC didn't adapt, though I'm still hopeful for matrix.org.
nebulous1 5y ago
I see discord links in a lot of places you would once have seen irc links.
- est31 5y ago
  discord has 140 million MAUs. IRC as a whole has probably less than 1 million. Still not a fan of it for free software projects to use proprietary chat solutios as the official place for discussion (maybe inofficial).
dminvs 5y ago
That's a lot of open sockets for one host
- WJW 5y ago
  It is indeed a lot, but since Whatsapp manages to get 10 million connections per box [1], 100k seems doable even without insane wizardry. A few years back, I wrote an article on my blog at https://wjwh.eu/posts/2018-10-29-double-hijack.html https://wjwh.eu/posts/2018-10-29-double-hijack.html about keeping 65k connections open in a single Ruby process and that was a hackathon project written in 4 hours. https://medium.com/codingurukul/whatsapp-engineering-inside-2-bdd1ec354748 https://medium.com/codingurukul/whatsapp-engineering-inside-...

fullstop 5y ago

I'm technically on both but really only using Libera.