The servers ARE NOT down, that is the problem, is is that the DB powered sites are getting totally slammed with spamming comment botnet, with many many IP ranges. We're working out ways to get them blocked out without harming innocents, but it is very hard. The problem is since it is wordpress sites, they are DB powered, each post takes a MySQL connection, and makes a DB link, then making the legit requests fail.
Moving servers is NOT going to help at the moment because it is happening on many servers. That's what I meant by gotnet hitting many domains, it is many servers not just one being hit. It is like a spider for a search engine crawling around for places to issue massive POST requests, wp-login, comments, etc anywhere they can.