Sam Moffatt

As part of my studies for Computer Communication and Internetworking I wrote an instant messaging system as part of the subjects final assignment. Both the client and server were written using the C programming language. The client application utilised the curses library on both the Linux and Mac OS X command line to provide a friendlier interface. The server application was integrated into a MySQL backend to handle authentication of users. A web page was set up to handle registering user accounts written in PHP. The system used a custom basic line protocol to handle communication and supported both peer messaging (e.g. a chat between two people) or the ability to join channels and chat with people. In that respect, it was functionality wise similar to those features offered by IRC.