By default, the bridge is started in SOCKS mode. In case your IRC client does not support SOCKS proxies, you can start the bridge for a specific network instead by overriding the ExecStart= directive: sudo mkdir /etc/systemd/system/robustirc-bridge.service.d cat <<'EOT' | sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/robustirc-bridge.service.d/exec.conf [Service] ExecStart= ExecStart=/usr/bin/robustirc-bridge -network=robustirc.net EOT sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl restart robustirc-bridge.service