Read a little on web sockets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebSocket http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebSocket) - it sounds like the server is required to speak HT

Read a little on web sockets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebSocket http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebSocket) - it sounds like the server is required to speak HTTP for the initial handshake, so connecting directly to an IRC server would not work.