The reason that CCN doesn't support IRC, Talk, Chat or any of the client software necessary for these services is simply resource-related. There is quite a lot of hidden traffic on the Internet that people don't usually notice. Those are the signals that allow systems to reliably communicate. When you read a web page somewhere else, a very simplified idea of what goes on (partly because *I* don't know all of the details of the various signals) is: (fictitious examples used here) (Computer-code *very* *loosely* translated into English for illustration. Think of it as un-poetic licence.) You are viewing a web page and select a link to Daisy Puppy Farm (Snoopy's birthplace) at http://www.daisypuppyfarm.com/adoption.html "Have you ever heard of 'daisypuppyfarm.com'? "Yes, it's 123.45.67.89" "I don't have a link to them. Who is close to them, geographically?" "Try 37.99.228.96" "Could you pass a message on to 123.45.67.89 for me?" <37.99.228.96 to CCN> "Sure. I don't have a direct connection to them but I know someone who does." "Is it OK to send the message?" <37.99.228.96 to CCN> "Sure." "Here's the message:" -- message here: -- 'Do you have a page called "/adoption.html"?' --- "OK, did you get it?" <37.99.228.96 to CCN> "Yes. I'll pass it on." "OK." CCN switches over to handle another user until... <37.99.228.96 to CCN> "Ahem! I have a message for you." "What is it?" <37.99.228.96 to CCN> "123.45.67.89 has the page you want." "Thanks, please ask them to send it." <37.99.228.96 to CCN> "OK." CCN switches over to handle another user until... <37.99.228.96 to CCN> "Ahem! I have a message for you." "What is it?" [note, computers are not very original and tend to repeat them selves] <37.99.228.96 to CCN> "I have the page you wanted. Are you ready to receive it?" "Yes." <37.99.228.96 to CCN> "Here it is - 156482 bytes of it - the data-type is text/html. " -- 156k bytes of data from the web page -- "OK. That's all of it." "Thanks." <37.99.228.96 to CCN> "Don't mention it." CCN now displays the page for you. All of this talking back and forth is done every time data has to be sent from one place to another on the Internet. The overhead isn't much compaired to the size of the messages when you are sending or receiving data in big chunks. With IRC, this sort of hand-shaking and talking back and forth has to be done separately *for* *every* *keystroke* sent back and ------------------------- forth. Plus other handshaking signals have to be made periodically to distinguish between someone thinking and not typing for a moment and someone whose connection has been interrupted. And with high priority. If you send mail, a two-hour delay to pass on the message may be all right. If you view a web page, a twenty-second pause to handle something more important is not serious. With IRC, a twenty-second pause between every keystroke would make it impossible to type anything. So an IRC keystroke (and it's associated handshaking signals) would have to have a higher priority than any other message and be allowed to interrupt at any time. There's another way to illustrate the problem. Go to the top of any message in PINE and press "h" to see all of the headers. Observe the header size in relation to your e-mail message itself. Now imagine an entire header that size having to be sent for every keystroke and not just every message. ------------------------------------------------------------------------