The DALnet IRC Network !

DALnet  is my home away from home, well while I'm at home really... confused yet? ;-)

I first came onto DALnet because Kestral asked me to join and check it out. Basically I loved it as many have and have stayed since through good times and bad. In those early days there was no lag for me (and being in Australia that is a big thing) and the servers rarely split. Now we are a larger network we suffer from those ailments but not anywhere near as bad as some of the networks, imo of course and this is all personal opinion, nothing to do with DALnet as a network *grin* Hope that covers the legal aspect! :)

DALnet was first formed in the summer of 1994 by Dalvenjah Foxfire (founder) and some of his friends, namely, MirclMax, Morpher and Lefler. In an attempt to free IRC from the havoc of the then EFnet (Eris-Free Network). I won't get into too many of the details here of the "special" services DALnet offers the normal IRC user as it can get technical, I have no idea what I'm talking about and finally this isn't what these pages are for... ;)

DALnet calls itself the Friendly Network and I have to agree there, the IRC Operators (IRCops) have always made themselves available to help users for whatever reason and for me have never seemed unobtainable.

On all IRC networks there are a group of people called IRC Operators. On DALnet there are a few subsections, I guess you could call them, of IRC Operators with special access to certain commands. Following is a brief list of what each one is and does:

1) IRC Operator: A base standard IRCop. Go to them for any question, and they'll try to help you out or point you in the direction of where to find that help. Their main duty is to see to the efficient running of the network. Things like connecting split servers, "killing"/disconnecting unwanted troublemakers, like flooders, spamers and cloners.

2) Admins: Handle the same as above, they are the owners of the machine and as such are responsible for the running of it. They select the IRC Operators for their server, and can effect a broad base of permanent changes to their server.

3) Service Admins: Handle the same as IRC Operators, but also look after services abusers. (Services is covered further on in this page).

4) Service Operators: Handle the same as above, but also deal with nickname and channel ownership issues (lost passwords, etc) but due to their workload they are usually extremely busy, so please cut them some slack when you go to one for help. They definitely would appreciate it!

5) Services Root Access Personal: Handle the same as above, but are the ones who actually manage and run services.

I should also note that DALnet has many teams and groups which handle specific matters in relation to DALnet. Such as special teams to handle Mass Massagers, Policys,Help Committees, etc...

There are also mailing lists you can join to keep up to date of what is happening on or about DALnet, 3 main ones that users usually join are:

A word of warning though, you can get quite a few mails especially from the DALnet list. To subscribe to these lists send mail to DALnet's Majordomo system with no subject and  subscribe {list_name} as the body. To unsubscribe send mail to Majordomo with the body of  unsubscribe {list_name} {your_email@account_name}.

Another feature of DALnet are its Services. Services is a single program which connects in the same way as a server would to DALnet. NickServ, ChanServ, MemoServ which make up Services are merely aspects of this one program. Also of some note here is my update page where you'll find modifications, updates, or whatever to DALnet which either aren't fully a part of services yet or are tehcnically unrelated.

Essentially NickServ handles the registration and protection of a registered nickname. ChanServ handles the registration and protection of registered channels. And MemoServ is a message service to send short (250 characters) memo's to other users with registered nicknames and channels.

All in all this removes the need for many of the bots you find lurking on other networks which take up connections and resources to servers which could be used for users or less lag etc, and lets face it we are here to talk to other users not bots. That is why bots are generally frowned upon. You can run bots, on a few servers only. To run a bot you must firstly make sure that the server you wish to use lets bots on and then you must register your bot with the administration of that server or face being banned from DALnet. To find relevant information look at the servers "MOTD". This can be done with the following command:

/motd {server_name}.*

Where {server_name} is the name of the server you are thinking of running a bot on. Such as:

/motd host.*

For your information host.dal.net doesn't allow bots to run on that server.

There are many changes in the wind at DALnet currently (Nov97), so I won't elaborate further to DALnet's specials features till things settle down a bit and I've had time to investigate them all fully.

Till then, happy DALnet'ing, I hope you fall in love with it as I have.

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Last Update: 10 November 1997