Chatting is one of the Internet's favorite pastimes, and it is accomplished in a way more ISP independent than either WWW browsing or E-Mail.

The first thing that happens is that you log on to a chat server (the most popular type of chat program is IRC -Internet Relay Chat- and we'll use it for the sake of example.) such as irc.scifi.com.

When you join a chat 'room', all the text you and the others type is sent directly to the chat server, which in turn distributes it to everyone present. Straightforward enough, huh? Remember, this is only the way it works for simple forms of Internet chatting. When you use a service like AOL, it uses a much different system. (No IP numbers or chat servers.)