ChivaNet offers an IRC server at irc.chivanet.org on port 6667.

From hemera or any of the other ChivaNet UNIX servers, run the following commands:

export IRCNICK='insert your nickname here'
export IRCNAME='insert your name here'
export IRCSERVER='irc.chivanet.org:6667'
irc

You can also run the chivachat program to do all this automatically.

Please check out the #chivanet channel, and check out the referral link for more info on using the ircII client.