-SILC - Secure Internet Live Conferencing
-========================================
+SILC Runtime Toolkit
+====================
-SILC (Secure Internet Live Conferencing) is a protocol which provides
-secure conferencing services in the Internet over insecure channel.
-SILC is IRC like softwarre although internally they are very different.
-Biggest similarity between SILC and IRC is that they both provide
-conferencing services and that SILC has almost same commands as IRC. Other
-than that they are nothing alike. Biggest differences are that SILC is
-secure what IRC is not in any way. The network model is also entirely
-different compared to IRC.
+SILC Runtime Toolkit (SRT) provides useful utility functions for application
+programmers. The SRT can be used as the sole and main runtime in any
+application. It provides application main loop, hash table, lists, atomic
+operations, threads, locks, queues, file descriptor stream, socket stream,
+network routines, a finite state machine, memory pool, random number
+generator, buffers, regular expressions, and many many other features.
+The SRT natively supports multiple platforms; Unix/Linux, Windows, Mac OS
+X and Symbian OS, and all APIs work identically or nearly identically on
+all support platforms. The SRT and all of its APIs are entirely reentrant
+and some APIs are completely thread safe.
-Running SILC
-============
-
-After installing the SILC to the system the SILC client is started by
-giving command:
-
- silc
-
-If you want to run with specific configuration file give -f option.
-
-To run the server you should configure the server first. To run the
-server give the command:
-
- silcd
-
-This will launch the server on to the background.
-
-
-Features
-========
-
-Features to be included into the final release of SILC. [Note that the
-current Developer's Version does not include all of these features, read
-TODO file for more information.]
-
- o Normal conferencing services such as private messages, channels,
- channel messages, etc. All traffic is secured and authenticated.
-
- o No unique nicknames. There can same nicknames in SILC without
- collisions. SILC has unique Client ID's, Server ID's and Channel ID's
- to assure that there are no collisions.
-
- o Secure key exchange and authentication protocol. SILC Key Exchange
- protocol provides key material used in the SILC sessions in secure
- manner. The protocol is immune for example to man-in-the-middle
- attacks. The SILC Authentication protocol provides strong
- authentication. Authentication may be based on passphrase or public
- key (RSA) authentication. For clients there is an option not to
- use authentication when connecting to servers.
-
- o All traffic is encrypted and authenticated using the best cryptographic
- algorithms out there. Command messages, private messages and channel
- messages are all protected by encryption. User can set private keys
- for both private message and for channels so that even SILC servers do
- not know the keys. Cipher keys are, by default, 128 bits in length and
- public keys, by default, 1024 bits in length.
-
- o Supports data compression with GZIP to improve performance.
-
- o Supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 firewall traversal protocols.
-
- o SIM (SILC Module) support. Support for loading of shared objects at
- run-time that provides new and extended features to both SILC client
- and server. These can provide extra ciphers and extra features to
- the software.
-
- o SILC client can be installed and used without root privileges.
-
- o SILC client can be configured by system wide configuration files but
- with user specific configuration files as well.
-
+The SRT is free software and is dual-licensed with GNU GPL and BSD
+licenses.
History
=======
-Even though SILC were released in summer 2000 to the public the idea and
-the protocol itself is quite old. I got the idea about SILC in its
-current form in the year 1996 and first lines of codes were written in
-early 1997. This release is now third rewrite of the SILC. The very first
-version were written in 1997 and it included SILC client and very very
-preliminary SILC server. The server actually weren't usable but the
-client looked pretty much the same as it does now. At that time the SILC
-also included RSA implementation and 3DES implementation. The random
-number generator that exists in this current release is actually based on
-the RNG written in 1997. The RNG written in 1997, on the other hand, were
-based on the SSH's random number generator. The RNG has been rewritten
-twice since the first version.
-
-I stopped writing the SILC later in 1997 when I got busy at school and in
-work. The pause lasted several months. The development resumed in 1998
-when my friend (Juha Räsänen) and I implemented ElGamal algorithm. I
-rewrote some other parts as well. However, for the same reasons as
-previously the development stopped again. I resumed the development later
-in 1998 by doing rewrite of the SILC in C++. This was obviously a mistake
-but at that time it seemed like a good idea. Again, in the winter 1999 I
-got very busy writing my thesis and was forced to stop the development
-again. I also, started a new job in the spring.
-
-Later, in 1999, I decided that this time I'm going to make it the right
-way. C++ was obviously a bad choice so I decided to fall back to plain C
-language. I also decided to do complete rewrite and started doing more
-thorough planning of what the SILC actually should include. I also
-decided that this time it is going to kill me before I stop the
-development. I started writing SILC in the weekends and actually
-everytime I had some spare time. I also started a new job but I didn't
-let that get to my way. The result of this development effort is the
-release now in public.
-
-I've learned a lot by doing the SILC. I guess, when I started it I wasn't
-that good of a C programmer. That alone was a reason why SILC hasn't seen
-the day of light before now. My programming style has also changed
-dramatically during these years. Actually, it has changed couple times
-since this last rewrite as well. However, the code style of current SILC
-release is quite consistent (actually the coding style SILC has been
-written now I've learned in my current job).
-
-There is probably over 85% of new code in this third rewrite. Rest has
-just been copied from the old versions and only minor changes has been
-made (like changed function names and overall coding style). I've
-preserved the dates of the old files (dating back to 1997) that has
-existed in some forms in the old versions. There is a lot of new code but
-already I see a lot that needs rewriting. The development continues.
-
-
-Contact
-=======
-
-Feedback and comments are welcome. Bug reports should be sent to the
-development mailing list.
-
-Official SILC project web site : http://silcnet.org/
-FTP archive for SILC project : ftp://silc.pspt.fi/pub/silc/
-Development mailing list address : silc-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
-
- Pekka Riikonen <priikone@poseidon.pspt.fi>
+The SRT used to be part of the SILC Toolkit; a software development kit for
+Secure Internet Life Conferencing application programmers. The SRT was
+split off from the SILC Toolkit into its own package due to its generic and
+useful nature. Many APIs still present in SRT have been in use in the SILC
+Toolkit since the year 2000.
projects / runtime.git / blobdiff