Chat clients enable you to participate in chat rooms and carry on conversations, either to the entire chat room or to an individual. By far the most popular non-AOL chat medium is Internet Relay Chat, or IRC. If you need information on AOL Instant Messanger, click here.

On IRC, chat rooms are referred to as channels. IRC has several seperate networks, each one of which hosts its own variety of channels. The most popular network is EFnet, which, although chaotic at times, usually has around 50,000 users online at any given moment. DALnet and Undernet are also quite popular, with approximatley 30,000 users each at any given time.

An IRC client is a program which allows you to connect to an IRC server and chat. The most popular Windows IRC client is called mIRC, and is available here. Most of the introductory documents are from mIRC's homepage.

mIRC
IRC Introduction IRC FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) New IRC Users Page Slick's mIRC Help Page

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