DALnet
DALnet is one of the largest and best known IRC networks . It was founded in 1994 by members of the # startrek channel on EFnet . At times, DALnet was one of the five largest IRC networks.
history
When it was founded, it was called “Dal's net”, named after the IRC admin of the first server in the network, “Dalvenjah”. It was only shortly afterwards renamed DALnet.
For the time, the development was rapid: In July 1994 it started with 25 users, in November 1995 the 1,000 user mark was exceeded. 5,000 in June 1996, 10,000 in December 1996, 50,000 in October 1999, 100,000 in November 2001. The peak of growth was reached in June 2002 with 140,000 users and 44 servers. DALnet was briefly the largest IRC network.
From the end of 2002 to the beginning of 2003, DALnet was the victim of severe distributed denial of service attacks. In addition, the operation of the IRC server twisted.dal.net, which at that time was the largest IRC server with 58,391 clients (and still holds this record), was stopped for personal reasons. The other servers in the network could not sufficiently absorb the load, which meant that even regular users could only connect to the DALnet with difficulty. Because of these circumstances, DALnet lost 60% of its users to other IRC networks. The condition has now stabilized again, but the old user numbers were never reached again.
particularities
In 1995 DALnet introduced the so-called IRC services , with which nicknames and channels could be registered and defended against unauthorized use. Originally, IRC did not plan to “own” channels or nicknames. The DALnet was the first network that successfully enabled users to adopt a permanent online identity on IRC. This service was very popular, fueling the growth of DALnet and paving the way for IRC services in general.
In 2003, DALnet introduced an anycast system under the name “The IX Concept” , which connects via the host name ix.dal.net to the IP address of the “closest” server.