Thanks Alex for the fast reply. I still see the average being well over 5 for the last 5 1/2 hours. Is this normal whenever a backup is running, and do backups usually continue through the prime business time of a weekday? I have in the past had some trouble getting my email and I thought I had the cause mostly pinpointed to my ISP. I am on Hughes satellite and my ping times can often run up to 2000ms. I noticed poor response times this morning and that's why I'm watching the server load so closely. Don't get me wrong, I'm a happy glowhost customer of several years.