> One of the problems of having multiple servers is that netsplits can occur. In the early/mid 1990s, the IRC servers in Australia would split from the IRC ser

> One of the problems of having multiple servers is that netsplits can occur. In the early/mid 1990s, the IRC servers in Australia would split from the IRC servers in the US all of the time (sometimes Europe would break from the US as well). The Internet connection between the US and Australia was slower and flakier back then. It made lots of sense for Australians to be on Australian IRC servers and Americans to be on US IRC servers, and to all be talking together when the link was working (the majority of the time) and to not be when the link broke (fairly regularly). The CAP theorem says something has to go in those cases, and the thing that went was consistency between US and Australian (or European) messages sent to a channel - the messages from the other side of the split would be dropped during the split. I don't remember many technical netsplits on Freenode or Libera in recent years, so it is less of a thing now. IRC servers were always federated, so there was the original split of Anet and EFnet, and the Undernet split, then the EFnet/IRCnet split which revolved around those US/Europe/Australia issues. More recently there was the Freenode/Libera split. IRC's model always worked for me.