I don't know if it applies to your situation, but I had some connection problems a week ago. In one chat client I tried, I got the following message...
Quote:
The nick HsF is currently being held by a Services Enforcer. If you are the nicks owner, use
/msg NickServ@services.dal.net RELEASE HsF password to release the nickname. If the nickname recently expired, please wait patiently and try again later.
...so I then logged on to the dal.net home page with a different user name and pasted in the bolded text, and it released my name and I could log in with my usual chat client. I don't know if this is your problem, but you could try it with your login info.