DALnet is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network made up of 39 servers, with a stable population of approximately 10,000 users in about 4,000 channels.

This service—which many users saw as a way of firmly establishing their online identities—was a significant factor in DALnet's popularity and afforded the network a distinctive reputation among IRCers.

[6] The other servers on the network could not absorb the extra client load, leading to users' complete inability to connect to DALnet.

Along with NickServ it gave a solid ground for usability and security on IRC where users got the ability to register their nicknames and their channels.

DALnet is also developing and running on its own ircd software called Bahamut which is based on ircd-hybrid and Dreamforge and was first live in the early 2000s.