EFnet or Eris Free network is a major IRC network, with over 50,000 users. It is the modern-day descendant of the original IRC network.

IRC clients can connect to EFnet via [irc://irc.efnet.org irc.efnet.org] which will connect to an EFnet IRC server at random (using round robin), or clients may wish to connect to a geographically closer server.http://stats.efnet.org/

Timeline

Initially, most IRC servers formed a single IRC network, to which new servers could join without restriction, but this was soon abused by people who set up servers to sabotage other users, channels, or servers. In August 1990, the server eris.berkeley.edu remained the only one to allow anyone to connect servers, IRC server operator Greg Lindahl ("wumpus") broke away to start EFnet. The resulting argument split the IRC community of admins into EFnet and A-net (Anarchy Network), which soon vanished, leaving EFnet as the only IRC network.

Continuing problems with performance and abuse eventually led to the rise of another major IRC network, Undernet, which split off in October 1992.

In July 1996, disagreement on policy caused EFnet to break in two: the slightly larger European half (including Australia and Japan) formed IRCnet, while the American servers continued as EFnet. This was widely known as the Great Split .

In July 2001, a service called CHANFIX (originally JUPES) was created, which is designed to give back ops to channels which have lost ops or been taken over.

In 2007 various EFnet servers began implementing SSL.

February 2009 saw the introduction of a new CHANFIX module called OPME, a mechanism for EFnet Admins to use to restore ops in an opless channel. It provides a much cleaner alternative to masskill, which was unnecessarily invasive and disruptive to the network.

Later in 2009, some major IRC servers were delinked: irc.vel.net, irc.dks.ca, irc.pte.hu and EFnet's only UK server efnet.demon.co.uk and only UK hub hub.uk which were sponsored by Demon Internet.

Characteristics

EFnet is probably the least "unified" IRC network, with large variations in rules and policy between different servers as well as the three major regions (EU, CA, and US) each have their own policy structure. Each region votes on their own server applications. However, central policies are voted upon by the server admin community which is archived for referencing.

Due to EFnet's nature it has gained recognition over the years (as other IRC networks have) for warez, hackers DoS attacks and online help.
EFnet has always been known for its lack of IRC services that other IRC networks support (such as NickServ and ChanServ, although it had a NickServ until April 8, 1994). Instead, the CHANFIX service was introduced to fix "opless" channels.

For help with CHANFIX a user can find an IRC operator with the command: /stats p or by entering the #chanfix channel.

A vast majority of servers on EFnet run . A handful run , and two run .
EFnet channel operators are generally free to run their channels however they see fit without the intervention of IRCops. IRCops are primarily there to handle network and server related issues, and rarely get involved with channel level issues.