The DALnet IRC Network

As of the fall of 2002, DALnet has been severely disrupted over the past few months from denial of service attacks. Your ability to connect has often ranged from difficult to downright impossible.

So what's a DALnet chatter supposed to do? Read on...

How Do I Connect to DALnet?

Tips for connecting to DALnet.

Use specific server hostnames like "example.dal.net" (I made that up) instead of the the "round aditya" aliases like "irc.dal.net". The latter is supposed to redirect you to a random available server, but lately it is often disabled due to the attacks, so that mIRC users get the error "Unable to connect (Can't assign requested address)". See the next section for DALnet server lists. (If you're curious about this error, here's a slightly technical explanation.)

For any specific server, instead of using the default ports 6667 and 7000, try other ports such as 6660-6666, 6668, 6669, etc. which are often faster or more stable. In mIRC, just type:

/server example.dal.net:6667

(where "example.dal.net" is again a made-up specific server name) in any input window where you would normally type text. Once you connect to the server, read the /motd which often shows all the available port numbers.

Just try to keep chatting and have fun. If that's just not possible on DALnet, then consider switching to a different network, perhaps a smaller one that also supports services like nick/channel registration. 

DALnet Server Lists

If you are already connected to a DALnet server, a full list of specific server hostnames may be listed using the /links command. Note however that you cannot connect to most servers shown due to the same reasons described previously for "irc.dal.net".