It's not a useless delay, because someone still needs to do the DNS resolution.
I think you missed the point. The proxy server will typically be able to do the DNS resolution -- the client may or may not. If the client is not, a client-side attempt at resolution incurs a delay.
That is the worst case, and a realistic one at that.
Your argument regarding anonymity is silly, because proxies don't make you anonymous. I would be far more worried about who is running my public "anonymous" proxy [..]
Nobody argued that anonymity is only relevant when using a
public proxy. Did you know that TOR comes with a SOCKS interface? I'm not saying that mIRC should cater to TOR users, but the argument is certainly valid. And no, if you really care about anonymity, you will not be willing to trust your ISP's nameserver either.
These, in order:
1. In most cases, a client can resolve locally.
Assumptions. I think the only
legitimate proxy users will suffer from the delay caused by this assumption. And that just for $serverip? Feel free to disagree, but I think all this is just not worth it.
