ELI5 what is an irc bouncer?
reddit / irc

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tafazzi87 · 2015-05-13 20:43

What is an irc bouncer (for example znc), and what is your aim?
thanks

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MillenniumFalc0n · 2015-05-13 21:06

An irc bouncer is a middleman between you and an irc network. It
connects to a network like a normal client and instead of connecting
directly to an irc network you connect to it. Usually you would set it
up to log for you and show you some or all of the messages it received
while you were disconnected. In this way your nick is always present
in your channels and you can see what was talked about while you were
away.

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tafazzi87 · 2015-05-13 21:23

Ah ok thanks!!!

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thatonederpface · 2015-05-14 05:39

In addition to what /u/MilleniumFalc0n said, it also can help to hide
your IP or hostname, in case someone's being a dick. For example, one
time I was lurking Freenode, and a lot of people went offline within
the span of a few hours. As it turns out, somebody in one of the
Bitcoin channels was WHOIS'ing everyone present, and DDOSing their
home IPs. Essentially, this made it so their router or modem was
satrated with junk, and they could not access the internet, period.
Sorta an anecdotal case, but those with a bouncer could reconnect
without the bouncer, and warn others in different channels of what was
happening.

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Dr_Midnight · 2015-05-15 03:24

Another case for why the user mode +x should be set by default upon
connection, and why people should use hostserv (or request a vhost) if
available.

As an aside, they're also helpful for connecting to an irc network
without needing to use several nicks for the same network (i.e.: one
for your phone, one for your notebook, one for your tablet, etc.).
Just connect through the IRC bouncer, and you're good to go.

I'm personally partial to ZNC.