I saw the slowdown too, and I check some traceroutes, and it didn't look like a network problem.. I have a couple of questions...

When was the last time the tables were dumped, and reloaded.. it can sometimes help table preformance to just drop everything to flat files, and reload all the data.

How often, and where is the database dumped to for backups? this BBS has a huge wealth of knowlage, and I would hate to see it lost accidentaly. I dump my mysql tables to disk every 12 hours, and have nightly backups to DLT tape for example.

12gig red mk2 -- 080000125