I never said that there should be ONE channel on ONE server, there could be many channels on many different servers even on different networks, and the servents could determine wether or not the capacity of a channel could easily support more users and try the next if it doesn't. There also is no need for ONE central pong cache, one could have numerous ones and limit the capacity of each to an amount that is suitable. And it is clear to me too that IRC has nothing to do with gnutella. But how do you imagine to chat ? You cannot chat over the gnutella network, perhaps even routing the messages over all the nodes between A and B ? If you don't want to write a totally new chat protocol (why should one ?) you will have to take an existing one, and IRC seems to be pretty good. That's my point:

1) Servents implement chat
2) Users that wait for a download to finish go chatting
3) Users that are chatting might stay there even after the download finished
4) While they are chatting, their bandwidth consumption is next to nothing and they are likely to upload stuff

you know as well as i do that users connect to the GNet, they download their stuff, and then they disconnect, interrupting any uploads. As many users have servents that don't do a good job resuming and re-searching (what Vinnie claims should be totally avoided), this is beating down performance. Other protocols try to implement a lot of ways to have them stay connected, for example they start automatically when windows starts, they do not close but minimize to the tray, and they offer gadgets like chat and online games. All I ask for is a simple irc chat feature, what's wrong with that even if it has nothing to do with the gnutella protocol ? It just belongs together, file exchange and information exchange. and anyway, having a pong cache on irc might seem to be poor, but it seems poor to me too that gnutella is only scalable by 'permanent nodes', which is in fact a server! yes, a server, a CENTRAL entry-point to a DECENTRAL network, which CAN be shut down by law enforcement if the court decides that their only purpose was contributory copyright infringement, even if it does nothing but return ips. that's my point of view.