It's a relief to hear this.
And what were you exactly testing?

Like, how can it affect the whole network?
If this is a bug that can bring down the whole network, it's pretty serious, heh.

I'm connected now.

I was mucking around with the source code on a large research cluster that I have access to. For some reason the nodes were connecting and disconnecting from Freenode quite rapidly witch resulted in most of my nodes getting k-lined. Freenode started going nuts and blocking my nodes as fast as I was creating connections.

Not too sure if other people were k-line'd as well because of this?? However, the timing was "bang on".

I had discovered the bug around the same time this k-line problem was reported. I ended up forcing the source to seed IPs from some Bitcoin clients that I run on a different network.

Whether it's right or wrong, when people who know what IRC is hear that IRC is involved in something, they immediately think malice..  This is not without foundation as a lot of antisocial behavior takes places on IRC channels.  The other thought is botnets which use IRC to bootstrap, control or communicate.  A program which connects to IRC is by definition called a 'bot' and to IRC people that means something bad, especially if it's not an IRC bot program specifically.

What Satoshi did here is use IRC simply as a matchmaking service but I could see how someone could draw the wrong conclusion when they see a channel with hundreds of randomly named bots idling in it.  Perhaps you could put these people's minds at ease if there was some pop up asking them if it's ok to bootstrap from IRC.. because if they just write it off as a trojan or botnet they may never bother to find out how it really works.

Freenode is too visible, right in the middle of where all those users and moderators are hanging out.  Laszlo's option is a much better fit for us.

I made 0.3.0.RC2 available that uses irc.lfnet.org instead of freenode if you want to start switching over:
http://bt.irlbtc.com/view/199.msg1787#msg1787

Heh... had me a little confusion for a few minutes, as I was monitoring my PC's connections and noticed that I was connecting to "irc.smutfairy.com"... needless to say, that wasn't a pleasant thing to see, as I couldn't figure out what would connect to a server name like THAT. I tracked down the process that was using the port associated with that url and it was bitcoind, so I figure it's alright... but yea, the name alone was enough for me to start tossing up new firewall rules there for a few minutes!

Yea, that's what weirded me out. I expected to see an IRC connection, but the domain had me concerned! My linux boxes are strapped down pretty tight, so I was a little surprised at that. A quick Google search turned up some info that tied it to bitcoin, so I'm less worried now.