IRC gained international fame during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, where updates from around the world came accross the wire, and most irc users who were online at the time gathered on a single channel to hear these reports. IRC had similar uses during the coup against Boris Yeltsin in September 1993, where IRC users from Moscow were giving live reports about the unstable situation there. Any and all topics are discussed, even some DP-related ones. Come on by, the regulars are a friendly bunch of lunatics. See ya there.
Servers exist to pass messages from user to user over the irc network.
IRC clients can be quite different from one system to another. Some of the basic commands that are common for all clients such as the commands to join and leave a channel is described below. Just click on the links below. For UNIX clients go to Yahoo . It's usually best to try and connect to one geographically close, even though that may not be the best.