When using my perl Simple SOCKS Server as a firewall in mIRC it seems to return the $serverip as 255.255.255.255.
Odd. Is that SOCKS4, SOCKS4a or SOCKS5?
Why does mIRC return 255.255.255.255 instead of either the irc server I am connected to?
SOCKS5 (and less notably SOCKS4a) doesn't require DNS to be done at the client side. Same goes for HTTP proxies. My guess is: the domain hasn't been resolved at clientside and thus $serverip can't be determined.
How does mIRC gather the $serverip value?
Providing it connects via SOCKS4 (not sure about mIRC's implementation for SOCKS4a, but somehow I doubt...) or directly, it needs to resolve the IP first. I agree, it's awkward that $serverip doesn't return correct values and perhaps the algorithm for connecting to proxies needs to be reviewed for next release.
Probably from RAW 001-005...
I doubt it. Raw 002 specifies the host, but there is no specific format to the message and many IRCds don't actually give an IP address within raw 001-005. I'm talking large networks, too, for example undernet, dalnet and freenode. In fact getting an IP from undernet would be most incorrect since they specify version of ircu in form uX.X.X.X where x are digits. $serverip is most likely determined if the domain name is resolved, before a connection is established.
