You can connect to the AlphaChat IRC Network via the Tor network. Please see the server list webpage for ports & TLS public key fingerprints.
SASL connect-time identification to a verified services account is required to connect via Tor. If you don't know what this means, or your client does not support SASL, you cannot use Tor to connect to this network.
| Server Name | Onion Service Name |
|---|---|
| irc.alphachat.net |
rnjlael46gqqmfiuiqsswdeev6axrf47j7bq4dtuqdsv2qgqfumcy4yd.onion Please use this address unless you have very specific requirements. It will automatically direct you to one of the instances below, for fault tolerance & load-balancing. |
| irc-ca1.alphachat.net | cr4elesi2ifau6xivukboqj2ojz5gvmdxnuck4hvniaco4t2fgloihqd.onion |
| irc-de1.alphachat.net | mynhbqethtsbad5trblr7t2xmrxgjeyrgk6peu2cpkqxw47yyj2o32id.onion |
| irc-us1.alphachat.net | rjmhwz5coqxunj3taoceh6etng4tvvaqg6nh3brhn2mfudpikptblpad.onion |
| irc-us2.alphachat.net | bh4jjq5zo26whufiroqab3bfvwcwtcygzmsr7jy7pzcbtaguqay56fid.onion |
The plaintext ports are NOT insecure when connecting to the Tor Onion services. However, if you wish to connect to the server's TLS ports (necessary for the SASL EXTERNAL mechanism), and you do not wish to receive (and have to override) server TLS certificate errors, you can use Tor's MapAddress feature instead.
Please insert the following lines into your torrc(5) configuration file, and then restart Tor:
MapAddress irc.alphachat.net rnjlael46gqqmfiuiqsswdeev6axrf47j7bq4dtuqdsv2qgqfumcy4yd.onion
MapAddress irc-ca1.alphachat.net cr4elesi2ifau6xivukboqj2ojz5gvmdxnuck4hvniaco4t2fgloihqd.onion
MapAddress irc-de1.alphachat.net mynhbqethtsbad5trblr7t2xmrxgjeyrgk6peu2cpkqxw47yyj2o32id.onion
MapAddress irc-us1.alphachat.net rjmhwz5coqxunj3taoceh6etng4tvvaqg6nh3brhn2mfudpikptblpad.onion
MapAddress irc-us2.alphachat.net bh4jjq5zo26whufiroqab3bfvwcwtcygzmsr7jy7pzcbtaguqay56fid.onion
You will then be able to instruct your IRC client to connect to the normal .alphachat.net addresses in the first column, instead of the .onion addresses in the second column, and Tor itself will re-route the connection to the corresponding .onion address for you automatically, so that your connection does not hit an exit node and then travel out to the open Internet (which won't work, as we block those).
Because the server's TLS certificates are valid for those hostnames, and as far as your IRC client is aware, it instructed Tor, in its capacity as a SOCKS proxy, to connect directly to such a hostname, that is the hostname that it will match the server's TLS certificate against, and so you will not receive hostname mismatch validation errors.
Please do not contact the IRC operators or network staff if you are unable to connect due to errors resembling "server not found", "unable to lookup hostname", "resolution failure", etc as this only means that you are not using Tor correctly. Instructions for configuring your IRC client to use Tor are outside the scope of this webpage, but there are many guides available elsewhere on the web.