Time Stamp protocol is a technological solution to an age-old problem of channel hacking. Because each IRC server maintains information about the state of the network, when a portion of the network becomes split due to a link failure, hub failure, or timeouts due to severe lag, and then subsequently rejoins, there may be inconsistancies between the state information in the servers that are reconnecting.

For example if server A thinks the nick Gawd belongs to satan@hell.com and server B thinks the nick Gawd belongs to angel@heaven.net, obviously the nick can't belong to both and without Time Stamp protocol, it's pretty much a toss-up as to who will own that nick when the servers reconnect.

This phenomena can be abused. Let's say that angel@heaven.net, using the nick Gawd, is the legitimate channel OP for a channel called "heavens-gate", and satan@hell.com wants to take that channel over. Well, Satan uses link looker to determine where angel@heaven.net is connected to. And since the present IRC networks are for the most part a star topology, satan only has to effectively disable one link to isolate angel's server.

There are a number of techniques that satan might use. If satan has root access on a machine, then satan may use a program called nuke (and there are many many variants) that generate ICMP network unreachable or host redirects to disrupt routing and momentarily isolate that server. Then while the server is isolated, a nick-collide bot that satan started in advance changes his nick to Gawd. Once that is accomplished, satan stops the nuke program or flood bot and allows the servers to reconnect. There is a 50-50% chance that sataan will now own the nick Gawd and control the channel heavens-gate.

Time Stamp protocol alters this scenerio because in each server, when someone aquires a nick, there is a Time Stamp associated with it. After a split occurs, when the server rejoins, the person with the oldest timestamp retains the nick. Thus channel OPS can no longer be hacked in this manner. For Time Stamp protocol to be effective EVERY server on the net must implement it, or alternatively, the state information from any server not implementing it should not be trusted over that of servers that do. The current situation with EF-Net is backwards. If a server doesn't implement Time Stamp protocol, it's information is trusted over one that does. This was done for the sake of backward compatibility, but in so doing the benefits offered by Time Stamp protocol are lost.