Botnet for academic purposes

I want to make a botnet, maybe with virtual machines or something. I've heard that some botnets are IRC-based. Any ideas about where to start for making a botnet? I am less concerned with the getting-people-to-install-shit angle, and more interested in the concepts of stealth, steganography, command & control, and distributed systems stuff.

>>25
but why would you? it's better to fly under the radar and infect high-value targets than to get detected and wreck some malware research lab. the only thing you could potentially gain from that is access to more malware sample, and if the researchers aren't already dealing with APTs then you'll just get a lot of boring macroviruses and phishing sites.

>>27
malwares can do that. they can also detect that their're are being debugged and behave differently if that happens, although obviously an experience reverser can get around that