DALnet

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For other meanings, see DALNET.

DALnet is an Internet relay chat (IRC) network founded in July 1994 by members of the EFnet #startrek channel. This new network was known as "dal's net", after the nickname used by the administrator of the first IRC server on the network, "dalvenjah", taken from the dragon "Dalvenjah Foxfire", in a fantasy novel by Thorarinn Gunnarsson. The network was soon renamed from dal's net to DALnet.

At one point DALnet was one of the four biggest IRC networks. It is accessible by connecting with an IRC client to an active DALnet server on ports 6660 through 6669 and 7000.

From 25 users in July 1994, the number of users grew to 1,000 by November 1995, 5000 by June 1996, 10,000 by December 1996, 50,000 by October 1999, 100,000 in November 2001, and peaked around 142,000 in April 2002. The user count then slowly reduced again until the DDoS attack (see below) at which point it plummeted and never really recovered. The number of servers grew from 2–4 when started, peaking at 44 in April 2002. The network is currently populated by a stable population of around 40,000 users (neither growing nor shrinking appreciably) in about 18,000 channels, with 40 servers making up the network.

In contrast to other IRC networks of the time, in 1995 DALnet implemented "services", a system that enforced IRC nickname and channel registrations. Traditionally, on IRC, anybody can own a channel or a nickname; if no one is using it, it can be used by anyone who chooses to do so. On DALnet, however, this was no longer the case. This service—which many users saw as a way of firmly establishing their online identities—was a significant factor in DALnet's popularity and afforded the network a distinctive reputation among IRCers. While attempts to implement a similar system had been made before and other networks have since developed registration services of their own, at the time DALnet's successful decision to allow and enforce nickname and channel registration was considered to be unique and even controversial, as it went against established practice.

The network operation was severely disrupted in late 2002 and early 2003 due to distributed denial of service attacks. Added to the DDoS issues was the fact that the owner of twisted.dal.net (the world's largest single IRC server, hosting more than 50,000 clients most of the time) delinked his servers (for personal reasons). The other servers on the network could not absorb the extra client load, leading to users' complete inability to connect to DALnet. The network was first crushed by attacks, and then by its own userbase. About 60% of DALnet's population moved to other IRC networks due to these extended connectivity issues.

In 2003, DALnet put up their first anycast servers under the name "The IX Concept", and made irc.dal.net resolve to the anycast IP. Since then, most new client servers linked are anycast.

DALnet has since recovered and remains functional, though it no longer tops the list of the most populated IRC networks. As of 2004, DALnet is the seventh largest publicly monitored IRC network by average monthly user count.