A LAN Messenger is an

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involv ...

program for computers designed for use within a single

local area network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, campus, or building, and has its network equipment and interconnects locally managed. LANs facilitate the distribution of da ...

(LAN). Many LAN Messengers offer basic functionality for sending private messages,

file transfer File transfer is the transmission of a computer file through a communication channel from one computer system to another. Typically, file transfer is mediated by a communications protocol. In the history of computing, numerous file transfer protoc ...

, chatrooms and graphical smileys. The advantage of using a simple LAN messenger over a normal instant messenger is that no active Internet connection or central server is required, and only people inside the firewall will have access to the system.

History

A precursor of LAN Messengers is the

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

talk command, and similar facilities on earlier systems, which enabled multiple users on one host system to directly talk with each other. At the time, computers were usually shared between multiple users, who accessed them through serial or telephone lines.

Novell NetWare NetWare is a discontinued computer network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, using the Internetwork Packet Exchange, IPX network protocol. The f ...

featured a trivial person-to-person chat program for DOS, which used the PX/SPXprotocol suite. NetWare for Windows also included broadcast and targeted messages similar to WinPopup and the Windows Messenger service. On

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, WinPopup was a small utility included with Windows 3.11. WinPopup uses SMB/ NetBIOS protocol and was intended to receive and send short text messages. Windows NT/2000/XP improves upon this with Windows Messenger service, a Windows service compatible to WinPopup. On systems where this service is running, the received messages "pop up" as simple message boxes. Any software compatible with WinPopup, like the console utility NET SEND, can send such messages. However, due to security concerns, by default, the messenger service is off in Windows XP SP2 and blocked by Windows XP's firewall. On Apple's -based computers, the iChat program has allowed LAN messaging over the Bonjour protocol since 2005. The multi-protocol messenger

Pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified form of contact language that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn f ...

has support for the Bonjour protocol, including on Windows.

References

Internet culture Online chat {{network-software-stub

History

See also

References