IRC Tutorial

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is an advanced chat network with thousands of users connecting to hundreds of chat servers. There are very large IRC networks such as EFNet, IRCNet, Undernet, DALNet and others, though the Kentec chat server is currently stand-alone, not connected to any of these.

There are different Channels, each discussing different topics, and you need to join a channel to start chatting with other users in it. We keep a channel open called #support (all channel names start with a number/pound sign) that you can join and get help from our tech support, or anyone else who happens to be there and answers. You are free to start as many channels on whatever topics as you like.

Every user has their own Nick (nickname), which is unique among all users logged in. When you log out, there is certainly a chance that someone else will use your old nick while your away, and you may have to pick another.

There are features of most IRC clients (programs) that allow you to chat privately with other users, transfer files directly to others' computers, and other things. You'll probably see the term DCC, which stands for Direct Client-to-Client, which refers to two chat clients communicating directly with each other, which is how the private chat and file transfers work.

There are quite a few different Commands available to do things, each of which starts with a forward-slash (/). In fact in graphical chat clients, all the buttons and mouse clicks do is perform these same commands for you, though usually without showing you the command being run.