Firewalls and routers usually block the incoming connections.
Some tips can be found here: http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/networks ... tprob.html

The link you saw for joining alt.binaries.sony.psp is most likely referring to the channel by that name on EFNet. EFNet is not a newsgroup/NNTP/usenet provider or server, although there are some servers sponsored by such services. In order to do what you intend to do, find an usenet provider, such a...

Go spear chuckers!

Chances are you, like most people, use a provider that provides a dynamic IP and at some point time, some user's machine was found to be compromised. In any case, most of them will refer you to a website that gives you more information like when it was placed in a blacklist and for what. Personally ...

HM2K, do you have issues with connecting to US servers when the UK one disconnects? I'm just curious. I hop on whatever I can connect and stay for a while.

When you /whois yourself, the info you see is your hostmask. If you are using mIRC, the username is probably under Options -> Connect -> IdentD where it says UserID

Hostmask:
nickname!username@host.name.or.ip
If you're not using alphanumeric characters there, that could be why you're banned.

Go to that webpage you were given and look for the "request to be removed". From what I saw, in Sept 2003, your IP address was found to have an abusable opened proxy. This doesn't necessarily mean it's your computer, but someone using that IP address. Your ISP is probably handing out IP addresses wi...

If you suspect you've a virus or something, please go get some anti-virus scanner and scan yourself. There's an online on at http://housecall.trendmicro.com/, then try to come back in a day or two, and really, when you said all servers, make sure you try them all. It's located on the main page of th...

I bet this will be expensive in terms of memory, keeping track of all nicks and associated user@host.

mm i really don't see the problem.. too many connections from the same IP? If there are too many connections from the same IP address to the IRC server, you will see that message or server is full. It appears that the scanners found at least one service that is running on the IP address raises some...

IRC operators can remove the ban, but the problem is that the detection services will find the same problems again and the ban will be in place again, and that's only because they really do find a problem.

Ah. I didn't see your post on the NAT. In that case, there's not too much you can do when you do get banned. If you continue to have problems later on, you might want to try the "shell / bnc" alternative I mentioned, but it's your call and it most likely not free. Good luck.

koichirose, since there's a lack of information on what you posted on what the "blacklists" find, it's hard to really offer many suggestions. as for port scanning, there are quite a few websites that will do that for you, just search for online port scanner and check a few of them out. i just don't ...

try this: get a trusted friend to scan your IP address with something called a port scanner and see what the results are, take note of the "opened" ports that gets detected. you will need to do some research yourself if you find anything and see if they are common ones for certain exploits or proxie...