Forums Connection Issues newbie needing help with connecting

well i don't consider myself too computer illiterate, so please before I continue, remember to be newbie friendly in ur replies if possible. well i downloaded mIRC knowing only that it is a chat client etc...but i don't know much about finding chats to go to...ah well that's not my point...I tried to connect for my first time (and continued to retry) but it tells me

*Connecting to irc.dal.net (6661)
*Unable to connect (Connection timed out)

then it promts me to retry but it doesn't connect again...how can i resolve this problem?

try kernel.dal.net

If you're curious and want to learn more about the concept of Internet Relay Chat (IRC), this web site does a good job of explaining it.

DALnet has been lately had some problem with attacks to it's servers... the irc.dal.net server pool isn't allways availiable anymore... the last weeks you might get connected to broadway-e.* from irc.dal.net but since DALnet is still attacked in smaller packets broadway-e.* is not lalways up...
You can find a updated list of server at the DALnet website here either check THIS page witch has a hourly updated list of servers witch work

Just in case you dont know how, when you open mIRC, close the connect dialog you see. Then in your status window type: /server kernel.dal.net (or whatever the server is you want to use)

And to find chat channels, you can get a list of channels by using /list *somewordhere* like /list *chat* or /list *texas* or /list *auto*