Talking in real-time via IRC

IRC or Internet Relay Chat or is a venerable means for chatting with other users. The FreeSWITCH team has several chat rooms on irc.freenode.net. They are as follows:

• #freeswitch

• #freeswitch-dev

• #freeswitch-social

• #openzap

Using IRC is simple once you know what to do. You will need an IRC client for your computer. There are many to choose from, including the following:

• Chatzilla: A Firefox addon

• IRSSI: A text-based IRC client

• Colloquy: An IRC client for Mac OSX

• mIRC: An IRC client for Windows

You can also join the #freeswitch channel using the Java applet on the main FreeSWITCH website (see the following).

To use IRC you will need to choose a nickname, known as a "nick" for short. Choose something unique, and if possible register your nick with Freenode. Visit http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#userregistration to learn more about setting up your nick and getting it registered.

A few nicks that you will probably see online are as follows:

• anthm: Anthony Minessale

• bkw_: Brian K West

• mikej: Michael Jerris

• mercutioviz: Michael S Collins

• pyite: Darren Schreiber

• Math: Mathieu Rene

• intralanman: Raymond Chandler

These are all active members of the FreeSWITCH community. There are many others who stay online throughout the day (and night, depending on your time zone). Following are a few things to keep in mind when using IRC:

• It is a public place with persons from varying backgrounds and standards of decency.

• Be polite, even when others are not.

• Do not "flood" the channel with long pastes of information. If you have more than two or three lines of information to share, then use the pastebin found at http://pastebin.freeswitch.org.

• When joining the room there is no need to ask if you may pose a question. Simply ask your question. For example, "I'm a new user trying to set up a gateway. Why does FreeSWITCH say that username and password are REQUIRED parameters when my provider uses IP authentication?"

• Be patient! Usually someone will answer within a few minutes, but keep in mind that usually there are more people in the channel during North American business hours.

• People from all backgrounds are welcome. The main #freeswitch channel is in English, but there are many who speak other languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, and Chinese.

• Always respect user c888!

Feel free to join the FreeSWITCH IRC channel and see what topics are being discussed.