7 The logon procedure

7 The logon procedure
Connecting and beeing on IRC is nothing but a telnet session. The telnet address being the servername and the portnumber for example 6667. Here's what to do if you want to try an unpolished tour on IRC:
You connect to the address, with the right portnumber, using a telnet client. (“telnet.exe” in windows works fine) Follow these steps:

On undernet this may scroll up:
NOTICE AUTH :*** Looking up your hostname
NOTICE AUTH :*** Found your hostname, cached
NOTICE AUTH :*** Checking Ident

If mIRC, and not your ISP handles IDENTD requests, it might be necessary to have mIRC running at the same time. (see 2.4 for IDENTD) or the server, if it is more forgiving will still let you in, only putting a ~ before your username in the /whois reply.
Regardless of whether the lines above came up or not, we continue:

First you type: NICK yournickname
Then you'll get a line saying: PING :somenumber, answear with: PONG samenumber. (If you don't get a PING, procede with USER)
The PING-PONG that you may have seen in your status-window while online is the server checking to see if you'r still logged in, while this initial Ping-Pong is to stop IP-Spoofing. The machine the server sent the PING to must be the same as the one who sent a PONG back, since it knew the number. It also stops a few attacks by assuring the server that it's someone who wants to do IRC at the other end, as IRC supposingly is the only protocol going PING-PONG in this way.
In fact, to somehow stop people abusing web-proxies, sending the command POST to ircu2.10.11 during login will disconnect you.

Now follow up with the command: USER username "hostaddress" "someservername" :Yourname (Keep the ".)
The username will be overridden by the IDENTD username if available, hostaddress and someservername is ignored but must be present. After that, various information scrolls up. (Some ircu specific here)

Irc operators or administrators would here issue their password for special access. There are talks about using the password to log into the channelservice (X on Undernet) and set yourself +x (2.5.1) before you fully enter the net, so that your address is not visible to anyone during even a brief moment of the logon, but this is somewhat in the future. (2003 or later).

If you’r connecting to undernet and using a firewall on your machine, the firewall may alarm you at this moment that someone in pinging your ports. This is not related to the IDENTD but is Undernet checking for malconfigured Wingate and Proxy servers (see http://help.undernet.org/proxyscan/)

Time to be greeted:

Welcome to the Internet Relay Network Alex
Your host is irc.clockworkorange.co.uk, running version u2.10.11.rc.1
This server was created Fri Jun 23 2002 at 13:28:57 MET DST
irc.clockworkorange.co.uk u2.10.11.rc.1 dioswkg biklmnopstv bklov

After this warm welcome, some pearls for clients:

WHOX WALLCHOPS USERIP CPRIVMSG CNOTICE SILENCE=15 MODES=6 MAXCHANNELS=10 MAXBANS=30 NICKLEN=9 TOPICLEN=160 AWAYLEN=160 KICKLEN=160 are supported by this server
CHANTYPES=+#& PREFIX=(ov)@+ CHANMODES=b,k,l,imnpstr CASEMAPPING=rfc1459 NETWORK=UnderNet are supported by this server

These ISUPPORT messages are an attempt at telling the client (mIRC, Pirch e.t.c) more about the server they connect to, so that they can switch on or off features depending on the net they’r on, instead of beeing bound to the archaic IRC-protocol.
The first five indicate that these commands are available on this net, followed by the maximum number of “/silence”s for one user, max number of modes and channels for one user, max number of bans in one channel e.t.c
In ircu2.10.10, "TOPICLEN" also controls the lenght of your QUIT and AWAY comment, as well as the operator's /KILL message. In 2.10.11 the length of the AWAY messages were split off as a separate setting, while QUIT is still controlled by TOPICLEN.
You may observe a channel having more bans than the "MAXBANS" limit. This is purely an effect of merging after a netsplit.

CHANTYPES indicate the three types of channels, +modeless (3.3), #ordinary and &local (3.2). This only tells the client that these three characters are in use as channel prefixes, they do not convey the difference between these channels. PREFIX should be read as “o-mode in a channel (channel operator) is shown by a @ beside the nick, v-mode (voice) by a +.” (3.5.1). mIRC assume that these prefixes are sorted according to the power they possess.
Chanmode is on the form CHANMODE=A,B,C,D where:
A = modes that take parameters and may add or remove nicks or addresses from a list (the banlist for instance)
B = modes that change channel settings and take a parameter when they are set or unset (setting the key for the channel)
C = modes that change channel settings, but which take a parameter only when they are set (setting the limit for instance)
D = modes that change channel settings, but take no parameters and all unknown/unlisted modes.

CASEMAPPING refers, far as I know, to the what character map should be used on this network. rfc1459 refers to the “standard” for irc. (6.9)

Later on follows the output of /lusers (4.1.1) followed by the server bragging about its personal record on connections, before we move on to the MOTD and after its words of wisdom we’re almost done:

irc.clockworkorange.co.uk- on 1 ca 1(2) ft 10(10) tr

where:
on = Number of globally connected clients including yourself from your IP-number.
ca = Connect Attempts, You have tried once, after 2 sequential connects you get throttled.
ft = Free Targets. This is how many different people you may contact at once, also see 3.10
tr = Targets Restored. Your targets are kept for 2 minutes or until someone else from your IP logs on. This stops you from “refilling” your free targets by reconnection.

The example tells you that there’s one connected client from your IP number on the net, and this is your first connect-attempt in a while. You have 10 free targets and no targets restored. (also see 3.10)
People joining a channel on invite will receive an extra target

Local host: dialup-1984.ppp.bb.gov (192.117.116.115)
Informing you what the server believe to be your IP and matching DNS address. Since ircu2.10.11, hostnames containing characters other than a-z A-Z 0-9 _ . and – are disallowed. Allowing them could potentially mess up both clients and scripts


A logon example:
NICK LouiseL
PING :209491250
PONG 209491250
USER llane "ppp-21.metropolisnet.com" "irc.server.org" :Louise Lane

What you specify in "someservername" dosn't seem to be crucuial, probably just a leftover from archaic IRC standards.
When you want to get out, type QUIT. (A nice way to learn the commands needed to chat, is using /debug [on/off] in mIRC.)

Note:
You get no text displayed the moment you connect and the server does not echo the commands, so you will have to turn on local echo in your telnetclient.

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