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I'm having a bit of trouble connecting to IRC servers with certain clients. First I was using irssi and naim through Cygwin, and I thought that the problem was with Cygwin, so I tried out ERC (the emacs irc client), and that's not connecting either. Both of them fail at almost exactly the same point (right after it displays 'No Identd response'), but I haven't changed anything with regards to my internet connection, and am not running any firewalls, including Windows Firewall. Can anyone help me figure out what's causing them to fail?

edit: Just tried it with mIRC (for windows) and mibbit, it works just fine but I can't figure out why. Does erc use cygwin for its functionality?

edit: erc no longer fails at the ("No Identd response") line, it fails at the 'Your host is masked' line. I noticed that that line is in red, is this something I need to be worried about?

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I'm gonna get flamed 'cause of this comment, but have you tried with a "Normal" irc client: mirc, hydrairc, x-chat ... ? – ldigas Jan 27 '10 at 6:23
actually that would make sense- since if 'normal' clients worked, the issue might be with cygwin - which emacs might need too. – Journeyman Geek Jan 27 '10 at 6:26
edited post: just tried it with mIRC and it actually works although I can't figure out why. – cornjuliox Jan 27 '10 at 6:46
do you run something like antivirus-software? mcafee for example disables irc-traffic – akira Jan 27 '10 at 7:16
nope, no anti-virus and no firewall are running – cornjuliox Jan 27 '10 at 7:21
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Check out the IRC Help resources on connection problems.

It sounds like running mIRC solved your problem because it does include an ident server. However, not all servers require ident, so that might have explained why the other IRC clients worked sometimes.

I'd suggest that you look at the name of the server you connect to next time, and then always use that server to connect. You don't say what network you're trying to connect to, but when you connect to "irc.efnet.org" that's a generic name for a whole bunch of servers. Note the name of the server you connect to successfully (that's found in the wall of connection text right when you get connected, e.g. "irc.shoutcast.net") and then always use that server since you know it'll work for you.

Occasionally servers go down, so it might break on you -- but better to have that problem occasionally than the connection problem you seem to have right now.

Good luck!

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You need either the IDENT protocol running or need to have it unblocked in your firewall (usually port 113) so that the IRC client can create a temporary daemon, if it's smart.

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