IRC starting guide..
    by SnakeByte [SnakeByte@kryptocrew.de]


The Maniac asked me to write a small article for his newsletter
about the International Relais Chat, so I am sitting here on 
a sunny winter-day to write something for him.. and you of course :)

The International Relais Chat (IRC) is a system that allows you
to chat with users all around the globe. All you need to do this
is a Server, that is like a Relais station, which forwards your
messages and other actions to all the people you are talking to.
The second thing you need is a client. These clients exists for
nearly all Operating Systems in various forms.
With some knownlege of the IRC-protocol you can use a Telnet client
to connect to an IRC-Server. But there are also several more
comfortable forms of IRC-Clients. There are Java-Applets, to start
chatting on an Internet site, and clients in form of Executables 
which run on your PC. It depends on your OS, which Client
you can use. The most known ones are mIRC (http://www.mirc.co.uk) 
for Windows and IRCii (http://www.ircii.com) for Linux and Unix. 
But there are still several others, and some of them like mIRC can
be changed and edited with the help of a script language
(check http://www.mircx.com for some mIRC scripts).

The IRC-Servers are Internet Servers, that forward your messages to 
all the other users you are talking to. IRC-Servers can be either 
on their own, or they can be connected to some others, so that they
form an IRC-Net. When more IRC-Servers are connected, they act like one
server, but the limit of the people that are connected raises.

You normally send all your messages and actions to the server, so you
are never connected to one of the others. So the one who runs an 
IRC-Server can log your talks, and disconnect you from the server and
other things like this. There is only one exception, the DCC-actions.
DCC is used, when you want to send files to other people or
Chat directly and privat with them, the DCC get's initiated with the
help of the server and connects you then directly to the other PC.

To log on at an IRC-Server you need his IP or Hostmask (irc.fu-berlin.de)
and the Port, where the IRC-Server is running (This is normally 6666,6667,
6668,7000 but others exist too). You start your IRC-Client and connect
to the server. You need to have an E-Mailadress, Realname and Nickname
typed into the client. You can enter there whatever you want *g*.
The nickname is the name the others see, when you say something.

After you get connected to the server, you are able to join a channel.
A channel is a chatroom, where people meet and talk together. This can
be normally done by the '/join #channel' command. Channels alway have
a # in front of their names. After entering the channel, the client shows
you the people in there, what they say and the channel topic.
You can chat in more than one channel at the same time.
If you don't know what channel you want to join try the '/list' command,
which shows you a list of all channels on that server. On each channel
is normally a channel-operator (op). This person has special rights, an
can kick people out of the room, or ban then, so they can never join again,
until the ban is removed. A channel operator has an @ in front of his name.
Every channelop can give the +o (@) to other people, so that there can be
more than one operator on each channel. It is also possible to remove the
@ from a user. Channles can have settings which can be set by channelops.
These settings are things like the topic, bans, invite-only flag, maximum 
number of users ... and so on. You can leave a channel with a simple
command '/part #channel' where #channel is the name of the channel ;)

To find out more of an friend or see if someone is online try the 
'/whois nick' command... nick is of course the name.
If the user is not longer connected to the server typt '/whowas nick'
to see something about the person. With '/dns nick' you can get the
user's IP-Adress. 

If you want to send someone a private message can try the following.
'/msg nick hi, how are you'. Then he gets displayed your message
in his current window. If you want to start a longer talk use
'/query nick' This will open a new window, which is like a private chat
room for 2 people. 

On some channels are bots. A bot is a IRC-Program, that runs on an
Internet server, and protects the channel. It keeps an eye on the persons
who get ops and who get banned. Why is this neccesairy ? Some 
pseudo-hackers try sometimes to overtake a channel. An overtake is 
succesful if the attacker has ops and all the other's don't.
An overtake can happen in several ways. One is simply nuking the others
and wait until the channel is empty. They the attacker is the first one
who re-joins the channel, which gives him automatically ops. But
more about Overtakes sowhen else. 
If such misbehaviour gets reported to the one, who runs the IRC-Server,
the attacker may get a k-line, which forbids him to connect to the server
again.

Now something about CTCP. This are special messages you can send to others.
Perhaps '/ctcp nick PING' will send a ping packet to the other one, which 
will then give you the time a message needs to get from your PC to his one.
Other CTCP Commands are CLIENTINFO, CLIENTVERSION, USERINFO, TIME...
They all get used by '/ctcp nick command'. Just try them.

Here we come to dcc. If you want to chat compeltely privat use
'/dcc chat nick'. This opens a direct connection to the other PC, and
nothing gets forwared by the server.

Finally two server command. '/motd' displays you the Motto of the day.
This are some interesting informations about the IRC-Server.
And last, but not least the '/quit' command, which disconnects you
from the server.

Thats all for now... cu soon SnakeByte