Differences between running in Unity Editor vs. standalone .exe?

I'm guessing this is just some configuration oddity I'm overlooking when I build but here's the strange behavior I'm seeing:

I have a game that supports in-game chat via IRC. To connect to IRC the game is using the SmartIrc4net library here: https://github.com/meebey/SmartIrc4net

Everything is coded and works fine when I run the game from within the Unity Editor. However, when I build and run the game as a standalone .exe none of the outgoing connections to IRC appear to happen. The game client never makes a call to the IRC server.

Is there some sort of network policy or sandboxing or something... that is different in the Unity Editor vs. an exe?

Thanks

EDIT: In the output_log I see the follow (note, I dont see these errors when running in the Unity editor)

This has something to do with the initialization of the IrcClient class in SmartIrc4net. Again... I dont understand why it works in the Editor and not in the exe.

 ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Argument is out of range.
 
 Parameter name: options
   at System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.validate_options (RegexOptions options) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
 
   at System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex..ctor (System.String pattern, RegexOptions options) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
 
   at Meebey.SmartIrc4net.IrcClient..cctor () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
 Rethrow as TypeInitializationException: An exception was thrown by the type initializer for Meebey.SmartIrc4net.IrcClient
   at IrcManager..cctor () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
 Rethrow as TypeInitializationException: An exception was thrown by the type initializer for IrcManager
 
  
 (Filename:  Line: -1)