What would be the user cap on a Raspberry Pi IRC server?
reddit / irc

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PrivacyFreakV2 · 2015-05-19 02:45

I'm planning to make my own IRC server using a Raspberry Pi 2 and I
don't know how many users the Raspberry Pi 2's hardware can handle.
How many users can it handle all at one time?

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TingPing · 2015-05-19 11:06

There are a lot of variables involved in that question. What OS, what
else is running, what type of connection, what IRCd, what features you
have enabled, etc, etc.

I think the only reasonable answer is you'll have to try it and see.

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b3d0u1n · 2015-05-19 15:08

Considering that the Pi is more powerful than many servers in the
early 90s that had a couple thousand connections, it will probably do
fine with whatever you throw at it.

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arcalion · 2015-05-19 15:50

worth testing - if you enable ssl for users (as i did during a test),
we did see a little bit of sluggishness with just a few users, which i
found annoying enough to abandon the idea...but we didn't test it
under load out of laziness, so, i'd be curious to know your experience
after testing a bit more extensively.  post your results if you do!

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boo_ood · 2015-05-19 16:02

Honestly, more users than you'll likely ever have on your network.

TLS might make it slightly heavier, as well as your choice of IRCd,
but properly configured, I imagine you'd hit at least 1000 users
easily, and likely more.

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j4jackj · 2015-09-01 04:28

If the Raspberry Pi 2 was in a datacentre, you could squeeze at least
15,000 users on a single machine without issue. Not that you'd get
that many, of course. You'd have to fuck around with the Ulimits, but
that's it as far as strangeness goes. Mind, the RPi2 is a lot more
capable than the RPi1, and I've heard of machines of less spec than
the latter handling extreme load (wouldn't be surprised if ~1,000)
with the bloatiest IRCd in existence, Unreal.