Instant Messaging

Greetings from the Newbie Zone:

I am running gaim 0.68 on RedHat9. I was using it yesterday. Today, I
open gaim and try to login. Instantly I get an error message kicking me
out. "Unable to connect"

Now -- inexplicably -- it lets me in.

Anybody else had this spurious behaviour? Google tells me others have,
over the years, but there is no cure mentioned other than "install the
latest version".

Craig