The Furnet

The Furnet is a group of servers that make up an IRC network. They provide a service called Internet Relay Chat - abbreviated IRC. It uses a chat protocol that allows users to create own channels with topics and visitor lists. This page is a good documentation to IRC. To take part in the Furnet-IRC you need an IRC client. I will try to collect a big list of clients so you can choose the appropriate client for your operating system.

Why do I get timeouts when I want to connect to IRC? This is a frequently asked question, so I will explain the most common cause for this problem: For security reasons the Furnet servers check the ports 80, 1080, 3128 and 8080 for open proxies to prevent abuse of these ports for attacks and spamming. Additionally all IRC servers use port 113 (ident) to check the user's identity. Some programs like personal firewalls, or real firewalls, block connections to such ports. If this blocking works using the "drop" method (the firewall does not react to connections on this port, not even denying access) the IRC server will wait until the timeout with each connection attempt. So the IRC server will close the connection, because the client did not respond in time. Of course the IRC server will deny any connection if an open proxy actually has been found.

What can I do against the timeouts? The easiest solution is to set the (personal) firewall to reject unwanted connections actively (REJECT) rather than just ignoring them (DROP, DENY). If an open proxy actually is found it has to be shut down before the IRC server will accept the connection.

Furnet IRC Server

Here is a list of servers that belong to Furnet and make up the network. If you have corrections for this list or if there's a server missing, please write me.

irc.furnet.info Port 6667 oder 7000 Server rotation through all available machines. Please use this server if possible.
panther.furnet.info Port 6667 or 7000 Frankfurt/Main, Germany Admin: Hurga
alicorn.furnet.info Ports 6667, 6668, 6669, 7000 Los Angeles, California, USA Admin: Snowpony
wolf.furnet.info Port 6667 Redwood City, California, USA Admin: ZetaWolf
greylion.furnet.info Port 6667 Vienna, Austria Admin: Taibu
lynx.furnet.info Port 6667 or 7000 Nuremberg, Germany Admin: Eisfuchs

IRC Clients

I collected a list of the most common IRC clients you can use to visit the Furnet. After downloading and installing the client you have to enter one of the formerly listed IRC servers (port number is usually 6667 but sometimes 7000 does also work) and channel you want to use regularily. To register at the server you will also need a Nickname, a kind of user identification. Most Furries use their character name for this purpose. When you're done a simple click on Connect will get the chat started!

Unix/Linux and friends: RedmondOS 95/98/NT/ME/2000/CE/XP/Whatever ;):

MacOS: AmigaOS:

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