Well, I'm currently using mIRC as my standard access to AO irc, and it's working.
However, I tried loading http://services.antionline.com and it is still loading (will most likely time out soon), so it could be that there is an issue with that server, ie, service is temporarily offline...

/me checks http://services.antionline.com ... Yep, timed out...

I asked people in the chat if they were connecting through the java page, no-one who responded was...

it seems that the java page is down for some reason....