Mondenet Technical Services, Inc.

Internet Relay Chat allows real-time messaging over the Internet. IRC is the computer age version of CB radio. CB radio and IRC are both publicly-accessible and non-profit, and both are used mostly for recreation.

Using an IRC client program like Visual IRC, you connect to an IRC server to access IRC channels. Like CB radio channels, IRC channels are used for different topics. The names of IRC channels always begin with the pound sign (#). Also like CB, IRC users have "handles", or nicknames.

Visual IRC is one of the most advanced IRC clients available. Besides text-based chat, IRC also supports sound and video. If someone types a Web page address into the IRC window, you can click on it to open the page in your default browser.

Click Client Setup from the ViRC File menu.
Click the User settings tab. Enter the following information:
- Nickname: your online nickname
- Backup nick: the nickname to use if someone else is using your nickname
- Email: your email address
- Real name/URL: your real name, or the URL of your home page
- Server: the default IRC server
Click the IDENTD tab. Make sure these two boxes are checked:
- IDENTD service enabled
- Automatic configuration
Click OK to save changes.

Click the network icon on the far left to open a new connection window.
Click the dropdown list at the far right if you would like to change IRC servers.
Click the light bulb icon on the far left to connect to the server. If ViRC can't connect to the server, close the inner window and repeat step 2 using a different IRC server
Join a channel.
- If you know the name of the channel you want to join, type /join #channelname
- To get a list of channels, type /list
- Or click the channel list icon.
The channel list has filtering options to reduce the number of channels.
- To screen out groups with only one or two people, set the minimum number of users to 2 or 3.
- To exclude channels with certain words in their names, put the words in the Excludes box.
- To find only groups with certain words in their names, put the word in the Includes box.