Jonesy
Thanks for the comments. I too sometimes have the same nickname on more than one network and have updated the snippet as suggested. At the same time I decided to add a feature that allows the user to double click the popup $tip and focus the status window of the lagged connection. To add this feature it was neccesary to specify an icon for the $tip so I choose to use one supplied with mirc.exe, specifically the one with the broken lightning bolt and question mark. (After all these years I still havent figured out why broken lightning bolt means connected and complete lightning bolt means unconnected.)

I only mentioned $server in case someone else was thinking of it.
Btw, your description of the $network identifier is not exactly correct.
/help $network
Returns the name of the IRC network you are currently connected to.
Note: It may not be possible to get this info if a network doesn't provide it.

$network and $server are not the same thing. $network may have more than one $server and some $network may allow more than one connection. also (unfortunately) $network and $server DO NOT have to be unique names on the internet. The DOMAIN name MUST be unique and so must $serverip BUT $network and $server are sent out by the SERVER in the raw 001-005 lines during connect and can be anything they set it to. Traditionally they will reflect/include the registered domain name in some manner. Also, if the network has more than one server all the servers typically use the same name for $network (altho it is not required).

Note: In the screen shot Local-Chat is the name of my 'network'