From the tracing I've done, it looks as though Max is hosting Mudcat on a Penn State machine, where he works. It's then mirrored automatically to various sites around the world, in the UK it tends to be Germany. When the mirror site goes down, the DNS routing directory tries pointing us at the main site, but a firewall blocks that and we just hang. Having blocked someone, it probably blocks everyone for a while, until life returns to calm equanimity.
The alternative would be to go to a paid site, as the 'Cat's probably too big to be hosted on any free one. That will in turn either mean we have to put up with a load of ads, which is bound to upset someone with more ethics than financial nous, or hope everyone's generous enough to cough up some dosh. the last alternative would be to ask someone committed to supporting the folk scene to host it for free, perhaps the Smithsonian?