ircns

ircns is a revolutionary way to use the chat protocol of the 21st century (IRC) using the best tried and trusted technology of the 20th century (DNS). It provides a bi-directional bridge between DNS and IRC, allowing you to receive and send IRC messages over DNS using conventional tools like dig, drill and kdig.

You simply do an AXFR to the ircns server, using your username as the domain. The IRC contents will then be streamed to you: the message timestamp is encoded as epoch time in the TTL, the name of the user is the record name, and the message appears as TXT record.

For example:


            koen@ALPHA:~$ dig @ircns.koenvh.nl AXFR Koen +time=500

            ; <<>> DiG 9.18.39-0ubuntu0.24.04.3-Ubuntu <<>> @ircns.koenvh.nl AXFR Koen +time=500

            ; (1 server found)

            ;; global options: +cmd

            Koen.               1337    IN      SOA     ns1.dnschat.koenvh.nl. koen.koenvh.nl. 1 28800 7200 604800 240

            Willem.               1774712716 IN   TXT     "Bonjour"

Sending a message is possible too using a DNS UPDATE message, using the record name as your username. For example using nsupdate (the TTL will be ignored):


            koen@ALPHA:~$ nsupdate -v <<EOF

            server ircns.koenvh.nl 53

            update add Koen 3600 TXT "It also works the other way around!"

            send

            EOF

Right now all chat messages will end up in the Libera chat #ircns channel at irc://irc.libera.chat/ircns or using the web client.

Made with love by Koen van Hove.