incrediBILL - 7:19 pm on Jan 26, 2007 (gmt 0)

You botnet masters

Hardly, I'm still in training when it comes to botnets ;)

Most of them that I've encountered seem to use the standard IRC ports to communicate so blocking IRC in the router network-wide would seem to be a reasonable precaution to stop the simple ones from communicating. You may still end up infected, but they won't be able to talk to your box unless they pick some random port.