UPDATE (11:49am PT, Fri July 17 2009): Things have been running smoothly since my last update. Our new firewalls are doing the trick and an average of 30 new attacking IPs per hour are successfully being blocked. We are currently filing reports of this incident on a federal level with the FBI’s IC3 department to further re-enforce the fact we take incidents like this very seriously. The report will be made public by PhireFast when all is said and done. Thanks again for hosting with PhireFast!
UPDATE (5:11pm PT, Thurs July 16 2009): I’m pleased to announce it looks like the problems have been resolved now and we’re readier than ever to face another massive DDOS attack like this one proved itself to be. Thank you guys for hosting with PhireFast – This is real-time assurance you’ve chosen a competent host!
UPDATE (8:23am PT, Thurs July 16 2009): The all-knowing engineers are now in and helping block one last set of IP addresses. We managed to keep server loads low throughout the night, and are now blocking out an IP spoofer.
UPDATE (12:21am PT, Thurs July 16 2009): Looks like we have this under control (for now, anyway.) Will keep you posted all the way to the end.
UPDATE (11:27pm PT, still Weds July 15 2009): We’re currently under attack from an IP address right here in Los Angeles. Oh, the irony! I say we go knocking on every door until we find the culprit. Nothing better than humor to get us through hard times like this. :-p
Original post:
Thanks to the talent, skill and experience of our team, it’s very rare we have problems like this to report.
However, tonight, multiple PhireFast servers have fallen under medium-scale Distributed Denial Of Service attacks, also knows as DDOS attacks. (Wikipedia article about DDOS Attacks)
What is assumed to be nothing more than an unusually impressive attempt from some kids somewhere, is taking a bit longer to clear up than expected.
All servers have been and are currently online and functioning. There has been no interruption in service, though you may have noticed a little sluggishness these evening, and for this we apologize.
DDOS attacks can be difficult to deal with. Think of one as trying to shoot several moving targets – Attacks spawn from many locations all around the world.
Granted we have handled tonight’s attack very quickly and effectively, the war has not yet been won. We do have DDOS mitigation hardware in place and are putting it to good use tonight. 
I will personally be keeping you posted throughout this ordeal.
(No technicians were harmed in the making of this blog post.)