IRCX


IRCX is an extension to the IRC protocol, developed by Microsoft.
IRCX defines ways to use SASL authentication to authenticate securely to the server, channel properties/metadata, multilingual support that can be queried using the enhanced "LISTX" command, an additional user level, specific IRC operator levels, and full support for UTF-8. IRCX is fully backwards compatible with IRC; the new features are downgraded to something a standard IRC client can see.
IRCX was originally supported on Microsoft Exchange 5.5 and a module was available for Microsoft Exchange 2000.
Microsoft has since stopped distributing software that supports IRCX, and morphed its protocol into the protocol used on the MSN Chat network, which was not standardized or openly available for use. MSN Chat closed on 16 October 2006.
Microsoft started to put IRCX through a standardisation process with the IETF by publishing 4 Internet Drafts of their protocol, but the standard was never ratified. Because of this, every IRCX implementation bases itself on these draft papers, of which version 4 is the latest.