The IRC stands for the Internet Relay Chat that is associated with the application layer in the TCP/IP model.

The chat process includes the client/server model of the network.

IRC are the programs that we can install into our systems for taking use of it . The clients who installs it with servers to initiate communication.

IRC is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat and data transfer including file sharing.

IRC is an open protocol that uses TCP . 

Users access IRC networks by connecting a client to a server. There are many client implementations and server implementations.

Most IRC servers do not require users to register an account but a nick (nickname) is required before being connected.

IRC was originally a plain text protocol which on request was assigned port  by IANA.

The protocol specified that characters were 8-bit but did not specify the character encoding the text was supposed to use