The TOC protocol or the Talk to OSCAR protocol is a legacy communications protocol used by some third-partyAOL Instant Messenger clients. AOL does not use the protocol in its own IM clients (AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ) but provides the TOC protocol specification openly to developers in the hopes that they will use it instead of the proprietaryOSCAR protocol they use themselves.
TOC is an ASCII-based protocol, while OSCAR is a binary protocol. In addition, TOC contains fewer features than its OSCAR counterpart. OSCAR provides such functionality as buddy icons, file transfer, and advertising.
