There are like 50,000 servers to choose from. How in the world am I suppose to know which one to choose? And when I do pick one I can never find any rooms where people talk back to me.

Anyone else having these problems?

You can choose any network you like, perhaps recommending Netsplit.de Network Statistics Website might help you pick a network, this gives you the top 25 networks (based on users).

Once connected to a network you can do, /list to list all a huge number of channels on the network, or /list *string* to search for a particular set of channels, i.e. *help*.

Eamonn.

Thank you

Just to add to that (/me gives CK a cookie), dont get discouraged. Just like finding friends in the real world, finding a channel you are comfy in can take a while. http://searchirc.com/ is another site to look for channels that might interest you.

So you dont get confused: there are tons of networks. each network has its own servers, which you use to connect to that network only. Within that network's servers, you go to the same place regardless of which of their servers you use.

You must have some criteria.

Example:
Do you want a large irc network (usercount 30k+ or even more)
Do you want nickname, channel registration services on that network?

If so then search in the servers.ini.
searchirc.com does lists networks, but by name you wont be knowing all the features of those networks.

The servers.ini list does not provide information about the servers, it would take up too much size and would be almost impossible to organise. Its purpose is not to give info on servers, but to a) suggest servers to use b) be included in the drop down list in the mIRC options for those people who prefer to connect via the dialog method.

Searchirc.com does provide information on individual networks. For example, look at DALnet statistics - it includes the Services it has, nickname length restriction and so forth. Obviously, as you say, 'by name' you can't see whether a network has Services or not - but searchirc.com is a better resource than servers.ini to find that out! It also has a page listing how many networks in the database that are a certain size, so you can quickly see how many users a network has by choosing the type of network size you'd prefer.

Regards,