Hexchat connects and drops repeatedly... new user, what am I doing wrong?

It goes through a bunch of text over and over again, ending in this:

"   Version: TLSv1/SSLv3, cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256 bits)
* Connected. Now logging in.
* *** Looking up your hostname...
* *** Checking Ident
* *** Found your hostname
* *** No Ident response
* Capabilities supported: account-notify away-notify cap-notify chghost extended-join identify-msg multi-prefix sasl tls
* Capabilities requested: account-notify away-notify extended-join identify-msg multi-prefix 
* Capabilities acknowledged: account-notify away-notify extended-join identify-msg multi-prefix 
* *** Notice -- You need to identify via SASL to use this server
* Closing Link: 140.sub-174-216-25.myvzw.com (SASL access only)
* Disconnected (Remote host closed socket)"

What am I doing wrong? I followed directions from two linux sites and also the help tab of hexchat, and what they say to do does not result in what they say will result. Thanks!