Empathy uses port 6667 for connecting to freenode.

Thanks for your bug report and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please forward this upstream to https://bugs.freedesktop.org/ and I will write a patch for it. make sure to link the upstream report here.

OK nevermind, this is an empathy problem, and I have fixed it. Lemme find out proper patch submission guidelines and i'll try to get this into the next empathy. Probably Maverick.

Patch made it upstream. This will make it into Meerkat (10.10).

pushed to -proposed:

empathy (2.30.1.1-0ubuntu1) lucid-proposed; urgency=low

  * New upstream release:
    - empathy_dispatcher_join_muc: assertion failed: (connection_data != NULL)
      when joining favorites rooms while account is connecting
      (Guillaume Desmottes)
     - Possible to open multiple accounts dialog (Danielle Madeley)
     - Fixed build failure due to missing header (Jasper Lievisse
       Adriaanse)
     - Empathy accounts CC module calls textdomain (Rob Bradford)
     - Should call gtk_builder_set_translation_domain on GtkBuilder
       UI components (Rob Bradford)
     - Empathy silently fails importing contacts from Pidgin
       (Guillaume Desmottes) (LP: #550569)
     - Empathy should use port 8001 to connect to freenode irc (Brian Curtis)
       (LP: #568901)
     - IRC account: don't allow to save changes when editing network
       details (Guillaume Desmottes)
     - Incomplete localisation of g-c-c module (Rob Bradford)
     - Avatar chooser can enter infinite loop (Xavier Claessens)
     - configure script not compatible with dash as /bin/sh (Simon McVittie)
     - crash on 0-byte file in log search (Robert McQueen)
     - "Network error" on connecting to Facebook Chat (Guillaume Desmottes)
       (LP: #542836)
     - "Previous Conversations" Search entry is not activatable
       (Guillaume Desmottes)
     - empathy hangs with high cpu load when changing avatar (Xavier
       Claessens)
     - "Join favorites" should deal better with connecting accounts
       (Guillaume Desmottes)
     - Status reported by account dialog is wrong in connman mode
       (Rob Bradford)
     - accounts_dialog_update_status_infobar mixes const and
       allocated strings for message (Rob Bradford)
     - Empathy should not requires that geoclue providers support
       updates (Laurent Bigonville)
     - some messages get dropped when using adium themes (Guillaume
       Desmottes) (LP: #546338)
     - empathy does not set geoclue requirements before asking for
       address/position (Laurent Bigonville)
     - Missing image icon shows up when contact has no avatar
       (Frédéric Péters)
     - Crash when trying to start a camera preview without a camera
       (Sjoerd Simons)
    - updated translations
  * added debian/patches/90_revert_removal_stock_person.patch:
    remove upstream git commit b87a2f274a838e8636c64605506e6ba243c2671a
    ad we don't have gnome-icon-theme 2.30

Testcase:
- run the package from -proposed
- check that you can still discuss and use empathy functions to interact with your friends

Accepted empathy into lucid-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

This is fixed in Ubuntu 10.10 now. Thanks for reporting.

It's using the 8001 port now, after the update i got with netstat:
tcp 0 0 192.168.1.100:37636 213.179.58.83:8001 ESTABLISHED 12685/telepathy-idle

bug is fixed with the proposed package, Thanks all.

This bug was fixed in the package empathy - 2.30.1.1-0ubuntu1

---------------
empathy (2.30.1.1-0ubuntu1) lucid-proposed; urgency=low

  * New upstream release:
    - empathy_dispatcher_join_muc: assertion failed: (connection_data != NULL)
      when joining favorites rooms while account is connecting
      (Guillaume Desmottes)
     - Possible to open multiple accounts dialog (Danielle Madeley)
     - Fixed build failure due to missing header (Jasper Lievisse
       Adriaanse)
     - Empathy accounts CC module calls textdomain (Rob Bradford)
     - Should call gtk_builder_set_translation_domain on GtkBuilder
       UI components (Rob Bradford)
     - Empathy silently fails importing contacts from Pidgin
       (Guillaume Desmottes) (LP: #550569)
     - Empathy should use port 8001 to connect to freenode irc (Brian Curtis)
       (LP: #568901)
     - IRC account: don't allow to save changes when editing network
       details (Guillaume Desmottes)
     - Incomplete localisation of g-c-c module (Rob Bradford)
     - Avatar chooser can enter infinite loop (Xavier Claessens)
     - configure script not compatible with dash as /bin/sh (Simon McVittie)
     - crash on 0-byte file in log search (Robert McQueen)
     - "Network error" on connecting to Facebook Chat (Guillaume Desmottes)
       (LP: #542836)
     - "Previous Conversations" Search entry is not activatable
       (Guillaume Desmottes)
     - empathy hangs with high cpu load when changing avatar (Xavier
       Claessens)
     - "Join favorites" should deal better with connecting accounts
       (Guillaume Desmottes)
     - Status reported by account dialog is wrong in connman mode
       (Rob Bradford)
     - accounts_dialog_update_status_infobar mixes const and
       allocated strings for message (Rob Bradford)
     - Empathy should not requires that geoclue providers support
       updates (Laurent Bigonville)
     - some messages get dropped when using adium themes (Guillaume
       Desmottes) (LP: #546338)
     - empathy does not set geoclue requirements before asking for
       address/position (Laurent Bigonville)
     - Missing image icon shows up when contact has no avatar
       (Frédéric Péters)
     - Crash when trying to start a camera preview without a camera
       (Sjoerd Simons)
    - updated translations
  * added debian/patches/90_revert_removal_stock_person.patch:
    remove upstream git commit b87a2f274a838e8636c64605506e6ba243c2671a
    ad we don't have gnome-icon-theme 2.30
 -- Didier Roche <email address hidden> Tue, 15 Jun 2010 09:30:00 +0200