23. Can a Firewall or Proxy be blocking my IRC session

Yup, that is very well possible.... I only know of mIRC as being working through SOCKS compliant (compatible) firewalls and HTTP proxies at the moment. Most other IRC clients do not properly support firewalls. You need a SOCKS 4 or 5 compliant IRC client to be able to IRC over a firewall. In some situations it is possible to connect to IRC through a HTTP Proxy. mIRC has a special 'Proxy' setting to accomody this. Ask your internet provider or corporate network managers if you are behind a firewall of some sort, and if so, if using mIRC will allow you to use IRC. (Read more on proxies and firewalls on http://www.mirc.co.uk/help/proxies.html)

Next topic: Ok, I've got a client installed and I'm connected to a server, but I got restricted access.