BRASnet was the largest IRC network in Brazil, founded in early 1996 (when the Internet was in its early stages in the country).

The network started with only two server and a group of friends, but in the six months that followed it gained attention of various Internet service providers (ISPs) and users, experiencing a quick growth (registering peaks of 300 users, an impressive number for 1996).

By the end of 1996, the network had already peaked 1,000 users and reached 2,700 by the end of 1997. These numbers were mostly due to the migration of BrasIRC users. The network continued to grow at rate of more than 200% a year. In January 2003, it reached 48,000 users and more than one million connections a day. The last registered peaks were about 53,000 in July and 60,000 in November of 2003. Some users (mainly those who used to access RedeBrasil, an IRC network that merged in BRASnet), being the majority of them teenagers students of big Brazilian cities (such as Recife, Brasília and Marília), claims that these peaks were mostly due to social engineering by BRASnet members over that network, prompting its servers to merge in BRASnet.

But following the great peak, there were a depression in late 2004, due to denial-of-service attacks as a retaliation for its administration conduct at the time. And since that happened, the number of IRC users in Brazil has been constantly and quickly lowering as opposed to the number of other IM services, like MSN Messenger. Although BRASnet disallowed access to its statistics, it's known, through channel statistics, that it has much less users than in the past. It's also known that it has less servers, losing important ones, like its former hubs.

As of 2005, BRASnet offers a free dial-up service (in association with an ISP), blog/photoblog and WAP access, but on the other hand users must own a registered nickname and must be identified to join any channels.

In May of 2007, users include (of "LABSEC") and bonny organized a distributed denial of service attack against BRASnet to the point that BRASnet redirect irc.brasnet.org to EFnet. As of 20th of May, the owner of the network, Mauritz, has shut down the network permanently with a farewell letter on the website.

References

Official about page — includes a graphic showing the growth of the network

Rede Brasil de mIRC deixa de existir – A news article about the RedeBrasil merging with BRASnet

External links

Official website

[irc://irc.brasnet.org/wikipedia BRASnet's #wikipedia non official channel]

[1987] — News about the closing of a channel that used to serve illegal content (such as credit card numbers)