All IRC networks, except one, in the global top twenty which offer IRC via SSL/TLS are listening on port 6697 and many smaller networks do, as well. Clients like irssi default to 6697 as do daemons like Charybdis and seven. Similar to how port 6667 is not the only for plain text, 6697 is not intended to be the only one for SSL/TLS, but it's still nice to have a common standard.
All IRC networks, except one, in the global top twenty which offer IRC via SSL/TLS are listening on port 6697 and many smaller networks do, as well. Clients like irssi default to 6697 as do daemons like Charybdis and seven. Similar to how port 6667 is not the only for plain text, 6697 is not intended to be the only one for SSL/TLS, but it's still nice to have a common standard.