👋 I'm Bhavin Gandhi (bhavin192).
Free software enthusiast, Emacser, Kubernaut, Gopher, Pythonista from India.
🔑 0xDBEB07AF
👋 I'm Bhavin Gandhi (bhavin192).
Free software enthusiast, Emacser, Kubernaut, Gopher, Pythonista from India.
🔑 0xDBEB07AF
Two months ago I started using IRC. I was connecting to some channels on Freenode, but my connection was not that stable also I keep changing host like sometimes I use machine from lab, my laptop or my Android phone.
If you have used IRC before then you must be familiar with the behavior of IRC server. If you are not connected to server then you will lose the messages when you were disconnected.
So I asked for help on #dgplug channel, the conclusion was to use a bouncer.
What is a bouncer or BNC?
A BNC (Bounced Network Connection) is a software that stays connected to IRC server so that you can connect/disconnect your IRC client without losing the messages.
Either you can install it on your own server or get a free BNC from some BNC provider.
ZNC is mostly used bouncer software.
Some free bouncer providers,
matix.org and riot.im has a bouncer included, simple solution is to get an account on riot.im as they have client for Android too.
I’m using EliteBNC, it’s a good service and well maintained.
Join #elitebnc channel on Freenode and type !list it will show all available commands.
There are three ways or commands to request BNC, !request, !easyreq and !emailreq
To get BNC for Freenode, send !easyreq <email>
Once your request gets approved you will receive an email, go ahead and login to your account. The link would be like https://xxx.elitebnc.org:1338
where xxx is server name, which will be mentioned in the mail sent by EliteBNC eg. Pi, Xi, Theta.
Go to ‘Your settings’ and edit the Freenode network, enable the nickserv module so that Freenode will identify you.
You can edit other details in ‘Your settings’
You can use https://webchat.freenode.net to join the channel if you don’t have any IRC client or use HexChat.
Add new network in HexChat and follow the screenshots.
To do that go HexChat->Network List, Add new network and Edit it.
We will be using port 1338, as it is port for SSL (secured) connection.
That’s it, now you have setup a BNC and you will not loose messages, also EliteBNC users get iline cloak so your IP address will be hidden.
I recommend qicr for Android as client.
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Very well written. Easy to understand for beginners. Thank you.
thanks for this article , didn't found anything simpler,with this utility i was searching for !
You solved quite an issue for us. Thank you :)
Bhavin, I think you should now mention here that users should not try to join it using ip 210.212.171.168 (RIT College) because they have banned college public IP
ZNC is great.
Good Article!
We also provide free BNC's, -powered by ZNC...
Nice, easy to understand and probably get anyone up and going quick.
Minor point (and grammar but it doesn't effect understanding) - you say: "ZNC is mostly used bouncer software." You could say: "ZNC is the most popular bouncer software." or: "ZNC is the bouncer software used by more people than any other." ... or a few other ways... like I say, minor grammar and understanding is not a problem.
My other thing though - was that I was wondering how you came about to know that ZNC is the most used. If I were to add such a statement into the bouncer page on Wikipedia, I would definitely have to put up a reference link that proved it. (no offense, I appreciate and also got useful information from your article - and you could very well be correct, since I haven't connected to IRC for some years, and only learned about the existence of bouncer software today (April 15, 2020) and you didn't mention if you thought ZNC was the most used, or if you actually knew it from some source.)
For others, you might want to check the Wikipedia page, which lists about 10 different bouncer software, including ZNC.
No worries, and thanks for the article.. still helped me some even 3 or so years after you wrote it. Cheers.