This happens often if I leave snooper on for several hours, but it seems to affect the WA client too (haven't confirmed this myself). At some point either the server stops sending, or the client can't interpret/display chat or joins/parts. Interestingly, sending messages will still work, so the connection isn't broken. From the affected client's point of view it just looks like no one's saying anything.. except you.

This can happen with all TCP connections. If the server and client both exchange PING/PONG messages (or the client uses the server's periodic PING messages), the connection will eventually "time out" (this needs to be done by the program, not the OS).

The WormNET IRC client does not send PING packets, so it is probably affected by this. However, this is rarely a problem; if you experience this frequently, check for reasons of packet loss.

I'm not quite following you here. Is this a known bug? It looks like a server side issue and I'm asking if it can be confirmed/explained/fixed. A tourney game already got ruined because one player couldn't be contacted without them being aware of it.

It is a problem in both W:A and probably the snooper you are using.

I'd like to note that normally this happens very rarely, unless you have severe problems with your connection (high amount of lost packets). You can check for packet loss by running the command "ping -t team17.com", leave it for a while and press Ctrl+Break. If it's above 10%, you may want to troubleshoot it. (FYI, I get below 1%.)