From a few quick tests I conducted, the /who # reply for a channel of 10 users averages to be around 1 KB, give or take. that doesn't sound like much when you're only doing it once per minute, but say 60 people do it that often.. that averages out to 1KB/s extra load to the server. 6000 people doing it would come to an extra 100KB/s, but that's assuming that everyone is in only one channel, and that their channel is relatively small. It doesn't seem like much when only one person does it, but if you add up everyone doing it, you will probably end up increasing each server's load by an amount in the MB/s range. Additionally, each time a client requests that information, it takes CPU cycles for the server to determine the replies. It adds up quickly.
With mirc holding the vast majority of the irc client market, changes like this would affect everyone, so Khaled has to be more careful than the authors of most other clients. It sounds like a nice feature in theory, but in practice, it's an evil abomination that should not see the light of day.
Just one man's opinion
