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MIRC oR Transverse or maco or whatever the flavor of the month is as a chat client is easy on mil radios. Today we have a system called APRS (civilian blue force tracker) it is possible to send an email over that network and it hit a gateway and be delivered over the internet.
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In the 80-90s there were networks that tied packet radio into the internet. I think it is a grey area in today's world due to the fact of "encryption". I'm curious why you say it would be bad to hook it into the internet? Not a HAM, so maybe there's some regulations I'm not aware of. There are a number of freeware IRC servers for windows and linux out there. I don't think gating it to the internet and efnet, undernet, etc, would be kosher though.
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In theory you could run a IRC server on a Broadband-Hamnet network.
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