html based chat-engine, which to choose?

looking for a high-performant web chat server

[muesli]

i run a community site which also features a very popular chat. the current system is a html-based chat engine (so no java or windows client, persistent http), which can only handle about 750 concurrent chatters, i'd at least about double this number. it gets quite slow at peak times and crashes at least twice a day.

as chatters are a small but very important part of the total community (best customers, good multiplyers) i'd like to provide them with a better and faster chat server software.

i looked at the market and couldn't find anything really appropriate and affordable. strongly modified IRC servers have been suggested by someone but i couldn't find anything convincing so far.

i definitely need the possibilty to moderate the server (ban/gag/kick users and the like), chat hours statistics would be good. it should either support oracle or run on mySQL.

anyone with some experience to share?

sorry if this topic has been covered before, site search seems to show only small fractions of WebmasterWorld..

[DaveAtIFG]

No experience, but I think the limiting factors to your chat service are likely to be bandwidth and server "horsepower," not the software itself.

[ggrot]

Feel free to delete this if it borders on spam, but take a look at the site in my profile. Unfortunately, I tend to refund users money and cancel if they become overly resource intensive, but perhaps we could work something out.

[muesli]

No experience, but I think the limiting factors to your chat service are likely to be bandwidth and server "horsepower," not the software itself.

the software is definitely the bottleneck. bandwidth is no issue (at least in my case) and the hardware is bored. the software crashes frequently too, so stability is another issue.

anyone knows which technology high-traffic chat-networks (those that do not use plain old IRC) use?

ggrot: thanks for the tip, but i'm looking for a real chat server with complete feature set, not hosted but for installation in my own environment.

ps. should run on linux or tru64.

[DrDoc]

Do you have a dedicated server? I mean, since you're talking about a "chat server", do you have a separate server for the chat?

[muesli]

a dedicated machine, of course.

[BjarneDM]

just enter :
web chat server php
into a google search :)

when I did this, the fourth result gave me all I needed :D