I haven't tested any of this, but perhaps a quick suggestion / clarification might help:
Have you tried running this in 6.35 at the same time of day as you tested 7.1? If so (tested within the same minute or so), you can rule out "coincidences" with the website speed-- there shouldn't be a significant difference in server responsiveness in a minute's time-- not after multiple runs, anyway. That, IMHO, would make it an mIRC issue, albeit a hard one to reproduce.
