I used to get a delay when connecting to a remote IRC server. The delay occurred when the server asked for an identd response. To begin with, my identd response was handled by mIRC, and there was a delay of a few seconds when connecting. A short while later, I built a BSD firewall and enabled an identd server on it. After the firewall started replying to identd requests, I could connect to remote servers with no noticable delay (after typing the /server command, the display would flow non-stop to the end of the motd). A while later, I started running my own IRC server, and when I connect to it locally, the delay returned (waiting for identd).

My guess is that the delay is caused by either mIRC's internal identd response system, or something related to windows itself.

-genius_at_work