To connect to DareNET, simply use irc.darenet.org ports 6660-6669, 7000. TLS/SSL connections are supported on ports 6697 and 9999 (verify certificates).
For those of you who can't, or simply don't want to use an IRC client, give our WebChat client a try, which can be found here.
If you're interested in contributing to the network by providing a server, please see our Linking Guidelines.