Issue resolved - but we will continue to monitor this. These temporary slow downs and intermittent outages have been affecting us since Tuesday this week and appears to be related to the general internet outages that have been occurring else where (DDOS). Our servers have been performing well throughout - its access to them thats been interupted.
resolved
The problem seems to be related to our ISP who host our NZ servers. We are working with them to investigate it further.