Real-time chat

[bengaltgrs]

I wrote a PHP chat system similar to gChat which simply uses constant(every 5 seconds) ajax calls to update the chat. This system is fine for a few users, but with potentially thousands of users, it is much too hard on the server. I've been considering taking the 'Comet' route, but have heard that PHP can't handle Comet very well. What would be the best language/API to perform real-time chat for a large user-base?

[psykx]

I have seen working examples in java, sorry I can't be of much help

[marek_mar]

It's not really the language that is the problem but where it is executed. PHP is run on the server and this won't work well as a client application, especially real-time.

The best option would be to use IRC and if you have to access it from a webpage you should use a java client.

[bengaltgrs]

I'm trying to keep my distance from Java for this. Does anyone know how google or yahoo handle their web-based chat?