<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by dan at WebFlyer:
The new virus/worm-du-jour, "W32/NIM", appears to be scanning our server, so that's adding to the already slow condition we've been experiencing.</font>
I would have expected your site's firewall to be set up to discard virus scans, once identified, so that subsequent scans would never get near the web server.