How to use XDCC to transfer, store, and share files via an IRC network.

[Vitalius]

Hi,

 

I'm going to explain the things mentioned in the Title. First, let's get some terms out of the way.

 

IRC - Internet Relay Chat

XDCC - Xabi DCC or eXtended DCC

CTCP - Client-to-Client protocol

 

So, everyone probably knows what IRC is. It's a chat system developed for the Internet to send messages back and forth (ofc). DCC is a way to transfer files over IRC. XDCC is the extended/enhanced version because DCC can't do large files (or fragmented ones for that matter). And CTCP is just the protocol used to send command requests between IRC clients.

 

It's basically poor man's Usenet (since Usenet can require a subscription to a provider to access certain parts of the network).

 

What do you need to do this? Well:

• An IRC client (XDCC cannot be used through browser based IRC clients), such as mIRC, KVirc, HexChat, etc.
• Said client needs to be configured to correctly use XDCC, which just involves going into the options and setting it to accept or ask if you want to accept requests and where to store them (most of them do anyway).
• An IRC channel/server that has XDCC set up. 

You also need to know what you can get and where you can get it, so you need a search engine for XDCC (http://sunxdcc.com/ is one example). 

 

What you'd use to actually initiate the download of a file is sending a private message to a bot that handles XDCC in the form of:

/msg <bot name> xdcc send #<packet number that corresponds to your file>

I have seen some bots (not all) support a "batch" function that essentially lets you request multiple packets at once in place of the send command. Uploading works in a similar fashion but it all depends on how your IRC channel/server handles that.

 

Here is a list of all possible XDCC & DCC commands: http://asdf.us/xdcc/ For storing files, you have to be trusted by the server and use send with /xdcc or /dcc instead of requesting from a bot. That link also has the necessary scripts to use XDCC on your own IRC server (if you have one).

 

Usually, if the demand for the file is high, a bot will put you in a queue to wait your turn. However, XDCC transfers can be very high speed. I see 30 MiB/s at times (individually, for multiple files). i.e. I download file 1 @ 30 MiB/s, file 2 @ 25 MiB/s, etc (my download is 400 Mb/s).
 

As you can imagine, like torrents, piracy is a major usage of XDCC, but that's not the focus of this how to. Just using it for whatever is the focus. Just like torrents, XDCC can be used for legitimate purposes. 

 

Things to keep in mind and/or be aware of:

• Most XDCC servers are run on Security Compromised computers. So be careful.
• Very few, if any, XDCC servers actually support SSL (though SSL via XDCC is a thing).

What are the advantages of using XDCC to download a file over a torrent?

• The files' life span isn't tied to it's popularity. It lives on a server, and as long as the server keeps the file and is up, it is available and will download at the max bandwidth the server has allotted to it.
• It is not a Swarm, so you don't connect to many other (potentially unsecure) people. Just one, being the server.
• The ports it uses are different from most default torrent ports, so it's less likely to be QoS'd by your ISP.

Here is an article about specifically setting up mIRC to use XDCC.

 

Feel free to ask questions.