Greg, I was talking about frequent short intteruptions rather than longer ones where something has clearly gone wrong.

I would suggest that at least part of your observations is likely to be down to other users knowing backdoors. Sometimes for example MC has been available on more than one machine. Most recently (changed now) the one ending in 105 was not www.mudcat.org which was 99. So if www.mudcat.org crashed and you were in the know, you could still get in on another server.

I've just done some looking up, at the moment there looks to be a version buddy.mudcat.org - a new one on me with an IP address of 207.103.108.110 that looks as if it might work as a back door. One just keeps to have to keep checking as the rules change.