It probably has nothing to do with the Annexe server, but a news flash from one of my regular sources (dated Thursday 8/18) says that the latest worm (Zotob or something like that) has been morphed into more than a dozen variants within the first week after it's appearance and seemed to be targeting Servers almost exclusively. A couple of big systems have even admitted they got hit. (The being hit isn't too rare, the admitting it is.)
I haven't heard anything that would suggest there's a major flap on, but my own connection (dial-up) has been extremely slow on several sites where I go often enough to expect better, and at least a handful that I visit only occasionally seem to be among the missing for the last couple of days. Rainy weather is a more likely explanation, but as long as you can't solve a problem wild speculating can be fun(?).
It appears that many, if not most, of the variants are being turned loose by self-sytled "white hat hackers" who think they've got something that will kill the original worm(s). The problem with that is that the traffic induced by so many similar worms all crawling around in the same systems seems fatal to the systems as well as to the worms. One test setup reported rapid infection with 10 separate variants all trying to kill each other.
As indicated, I have NO news to indicate that any specific servers may currently be having a problem, or that any specific server might have this problem; but servers and ISPs seem to have been the main targets since Zotob popped up about 2 weeks ago, and some have reported down time because of it.
Individuals with unpatched Win2K systems would be vulnerable, but seem not to have been hit too often. Still time to get the patch maybe, if you're running Win2K. There's some question about whether other OS may be attacked by at least one of the variants, but no confirmation from the experts.