IRC

What is IRC?

IRC, or Internet Relay Chat is a chat protocol. Unlike other chat systems such as MSN, Yahoo or AIM. IRC is a protocol and not a piece of software, there are thousands of IRC networks and hundreads of clients. An IRC network is made up of multiple channels in which people can chat. There can be both public and private channels. So for example, anyone can join #darkscience. Multiple people can join a channel and communicate at the same time. The IRC protocol also allows you to send private messages between another IRC user.

How can I use IRC?

To use IRC you will need an IRC client, you can see our list of recommended IRC clients. If you don't want to install any software you can use a web client such as Mibbit.

How do I connect to Dark Science in my IRC client?

You will need to add a new network/server. The hostname for Dark Science is irc.darkscience.net and the port is 6697. You will need to enable SSL to connect to Dark Science. Dark Science has several linked IRC servers, you can find a full list on our servers page.

My client says its unsecure?

Each operating system or application will have a list of certificates it trusts, if the operating system doesn't know the certificate, then it will complain about the certificate being unsecure, on invalid. Dark Science uses LetsEncrypt, unfortunately LetsEncrypt is not included in every operating system, only a few linux distributions. You can check the inclusion status here.

Basic IRC commands

Once you have connected to the network, you can register your nickname so no one else can use it. To do this visit the NickServ page. Seems legit?

I don't even have a client, what do I do?

You can access our web chat provided by Mibbit.

You can find the following resources and guides for our IRC services: