LysKOM Protocol A
This page is devoted to the LysKOM Protocol A protocol.
LysKOM is a conferencing system developed by the Lysator Academic
Computer Society at University of Linköping. Several introductory texts in Swedish are available.
LysKOM can be seen as a cross between news and email, but with
the presence and speed of IRC or ICQ. LysKOM is suitable for
small or medium-sized communities. The largest known LysKOM
server installation is used by slightly less than 1000 users each
month, and typically has 300-500 simultaneous users.
LysKOM Protocol A is a protocol that runs on top of TCP/IP. It
has been in use at Lysator since 1990, and has proven to be
extensible in a backwards-compatible way. (Clients from dating
from 1990 can still communicate with a modern server.) Since the
start, it has used port 4894. That port was registered by IANA
on 2001-06-20.
The LysKOM server and several clients are available for
download from ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/lyskom/ and http://www.lysator.liu.se/lyskom/.
Protocol specification
The protocol specification is available in several formats:
- The Texinfo source code.
All other formats are generated from this source.
(This document makes heavy use of Texinfo macros. Due to bugs
in all current versions of texinfo.tex it cannot easily be
typeset as DVI or PDF. Get the source
code for lyskomd for an ugly workaround.)
- Info files, as a
gzipped tar archive.
- Browsable HTML.
- Single-file HTML. This is a
single large HTML file.
- PDF. This file contains
several typos. The HTML- and info versions should be trusted
more than this file.
- DVI. This file contains
several typos. The HTML- and info versions should be trusted
more than this file.