He means the irc network. The servers which one connects to when using irc. The freenode network is an irc network that one can connect to in order to chat but

He means the irc network. The servers which one connects to when using irc. The freenode network is an irc network that one can connect to in order to chat but there's a freenode domain that acts as a client to the network which it seems freenode Ltd (of which Andrew is now the only member on the board) owns