Scheduled maintenance - 24 OCT 2019
We will be performing scheduled maintenance starting at 02:00 AM UTC on October 24, 2019, lasting approximately 30 minutes. This may result in a few users being disconnected due to server restarts. To ensure you can immediately reconnect, we always suggest using irc.darenet.org. We apologize for the inconvenience. Should you have any questions, please stop by #help.
Update (24 OCT 2019 @ 02:17 AM UTC): All scheduled maintenance has been completed.
Scheduled maintenance - 02 JULY 2019
We will be performing scheduled maintenance starting at 11:00 PM UTC on July 2, 2019 and lasting for approximately one hour. This will result in a portion of our IRC servers being restarted. To ensure you can immediately reconnect in the event you are disconnected, we always suggest using irc.darenet.org. We apologize for the inconvenience. Should you have any questions, please stop by #help.
Update (2 JUL 2019 @ 11:15 PM UTC): All scheduled maintenance has been completed.
Scheduled maintenance - 28 JUNE 2019
We will be performing scheduled maintenance on the machine that runs our IRC services (C and N) starting at 1AM UTC on 28 June 2019 and lasting approximately one hour. During this time, account and channel services will be unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience, and should you need any assistance, please stop by #help.
Update (28 JUN 2019 @ 01:45 AM UTC): All scheduled maintenance has been completed.
Running an IRC Network in 2019: Challenges and Opportunities
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is one of the oldest kids on the block. Its user base has been in decline. The Internet has become increasingly centralized and web-centric; “relevant” chat platforms these days are Discord and Slack. So why should we, in 2019, still bother with a chat network running a protocol created back in the late 80s, early 90s? We have found answers of our own to that ... Read on
Let's Encrypt and SNI
We have fully transitioned to using Let's Encrypt certificates for our IRC servers. This means we no longer sign our certificates using our own Certificate Authority (CA) for client connections. Most IRC clients should have no problem verifying them; however, you can download the root certificate from LetsEncrypt if need be.
We now also support SNI. For clients that support it, this means the server will offer the appropriate certificate regardless of whether you connect using irc.darenet.org or use the server's darenet.org hostname.