Would a bot get locked out if it responds to 20 PING messages in a short period of time?

I think some sort of limit exists because I just got blocked out from the IRC server. I tried using another account and it still didn’t work so I guess the whole distributing the load idea isn’t possible, at least on a single IP address.

:tmi.twitch.tv NOTICE * :Error logging in

This is the error I’m seeing right now. The code used to work fine at a small scale so I’m pretty sure it’s the limit.