The reason you saw so many posts referring ppl to the IRC Errors thread is because, sadly, many ppl dont take the time you obviously did to do a search. If ppl took the time to do a search, we wouldnt have to tell 50 diff ppl the same thing.
The "stupid little 2 line analogy" you object to was written that way so the less technically oriented user could read a simple explanation with links to urls to read more details should they wish to. We found simply referring users to pages like
here seemed to be of little help to many users.
"The answer to the problem IS NOT IN THE ANSWER YOU *PEOPLE WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO KNOW* ARE TELLING YOU. The answer is they dont know." well, as the user on this thread quoted me as saying, I dont have a why. Pretty much looks like i said i dont know and could only report what others have found helped. And if you read the other posts on this issue, i know you saw that, and what others have tried/found, ie disabling firewall, changing servers, updating firmware, removing speed patches. I disagree with you that ppl reporting what they have found worked/didnt work are "pointless replies", altho i do agree that having to say the same thing over and over is annoying, as annoying im sure as it is to read over and over by those who do a search.
Your report that you can send on EFnet without any problem, but cant on DALnet is one i dont recall seeing before. Hopefully others will report if they find the same thing. But i do know this is happening to some ppl regardless of network. Understand that by its very inconsistancy, this problem isnt easy to track down. As you yourself said, it isnt consistant for you in various ways either.
Your comments about what you found regarding ips i also dont remember anyone reporting. Oddly enuf, the 172.16.0.1 is BLACKHOLE-1.IANA.ORG, "This block is reserved for special purposes. Please see RFC 1918 for additional information." Altho this article relates to errors in win2k, you may find it of interest:
MS support article re the other ip you mentioned, 66.12.202.2 was the person you were sending to on one of the various verizon dsls? And i assume both of these happened on DALnet? Before or since the attacks? Could other ppl could send to that user all right? Can you pin down any changes that occurred about the same time this started to happen to you?
I realize i am more asking questions than giving you the specific answer you want, but the problem is there isnt one i can give. There is some speculation that the cause is the change of the default MTU from 1,492 to 1,500 in Win2K and after, but again we are back to the blackhole detection issue and as it relates to win2k. (Yes, i know you have XP, but i mention it only due to what i said above so please dont start yelling at me for talking about 2k when you have XP..hrm, i wonder if it was on the recieving persons end rather than yours)
