Difference between username and nickname? reddit / irc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- smark22 · 2014-12-31 21:54 What is the difference between the username and the nickname? It seems to be that the username is solely for identification to the irc server, and the nickname is solely for identification to other user; however, I may be wrong. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- beleuchtung · 2015-01-01 02:11 The username usually has a shorter maximum length, and it cannot be changed without reconnecting. It isn't required to be unique. Normally, clients don't display it prominently, only when the user wants to see it. The nickname can usually (not everywhere) be longer, can be changed with the /nick command, and you can't take a nickname someone else is already using, so that is how a specific user is identified (e.g. in commands like /kick, /mode, /msg and such). The nickname is what is normally displayed beside people's messages. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Techman- · 2015-01-01 09:33 A username is part of the core of IRC. The Vlasic name for it, though, is *ident*. I'm not good at explaining idents really well on a non- technical level. [Here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ident_protocol#Uses) is the technical stuff about it, though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- autowikibot · 2015-01-01 09:33 ##### ###### #### Section 4. [**Uses**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ident_protocol#Uses) of article [**Ident protocol**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ident%20protocol): [](#sfw) --- > >Ident is important on [IRC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat) as a large number of people connect to IRC from a server shared by multiple users, often using a [bouncer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounce_(network\)). Without Ident there would be no way to ban a single user without banning the entire host. The server administrator may also use this information to identify the abusive user. >On most IRC networks, when the server fails to get an Ident response it falls back to the username given by client, but marks it as "not verified", usually by prefixing with a tilde; e.g. ~josh. Some IRC servers even go as far as blocking clients without an ident response, the main reason being that it makes it much harder to connect via an "[open proxy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_proxy)" or a system where you have compromised a single account of some form but do not have [root](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superuser) (on Unix-like systems, only root can listen for network connections on ports below 1024). >However, Ident is next to ineffective when used with personal computers, on which the user often has enough privileges to make the Ident daemon reply whatever the user wants. In fact, most Ident servers for Windows don't even bother checking the owner of a connection and just reply with a preconfigured username. [*[citation needed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)*] > --- ^Interesting: [^113 ^\(number)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/113_\(number\)) ^| [^Port ^triggering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_triggering) ^Parent ^commenter ^can [^toggle ^NSFW](/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot NSFW toggle&message=%2Btoggle-nsfw+cnb3db0) ^or[](#or) [^delete](/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot Deletion&message=%2Bdelete+cnb3db0)^. ^Will ^also ^delete ^on ^comment ^score ^of ^-1 ^or ^less. ^| [^(FAQs)](http://www.np.reddit.com/r/autowikibot/wiki/index) ^| [^Mods ](http://www.np.reddit.com/r/autowikibot/comments/1x013o/for_moderator s_switches_commands_and_css/) ^| [^Magic ^Words](http://www.np.reddit. com/r/autowikibot/comments/1ux484/ask_wikibot/) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- silverforest · 2015-01-01 14:35 ##History lesson, folks!! Back in the day (1970s-80s?), computers were expensive. Very many users used to share the same computer to connect to the internet. Users would log in to the computer with their username and password (just as you do today!) and have access to the computer via their own account. This is of course a problem for IRC servers, because all these people would have the same IP address. If you banned that one IP address, very many innocent people would be banned from that one server. So that this doesn't happen, the IRC server would ask the user's computer via the `ident` protocol what specific user account was connecting to IRC. Whatever the computer returned was the username! Back in those days you could **not** control what was in your username field. (Or if your computer has the `ident` responder running.) ##Modern Day These days there aren't that many multiuser computer systems around, so the username field can be whatever you want (unless you're connecting from a shared machine, or an IRC bouncer, etc). It's just there for show, really. Some servers use it together with the optional server password to allow automatic identification with NickServ, ask a server operator for details. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- smark22 · 2015-01-01 20:13 Thank you for the link ---------------------------------------------------------------------- smark22 · 2015-01-01 20:14 Thank you for clearing that up