Penguin
Annotated edit history of IDENT version 3, including all changes. View license author blame.
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2 AristotlePagaltzis 1 [IDENT] is a simple protocol by which a server can request the username (or a cookie uniquely identifying a local user) associated with a client machine's [TCP] connection. It uses [Port] 113 and is sometimes also called AUTH.
1 PerryLorier 2
3 AristotlePagaltzis 3 The [IDENT] protocol was intended to report abuse in times when users generally only had unprivileged accounts on a centrally administrated host. It has become useless now that everyone is their own [PC]'s administrator. It also doesn't transverse [NAT] very well due to port rewriting which makes it hard to tell which host the [IDENT] request is addressed to. Therefore it is mostly deprecated now, even though it is still in use on many [IRC] networks.