I seems like we are going to need to burn some more money. Yet again Dread/Recon is receiving a large DDOS attack which is killing the guard nodes on our fronts. These attacks are in conjunction with other attacks on the Tor network. If you look on the torproject performance metrics you will see a consistent rise on the time it takes to complete average requests. Timeouts and failures are becoming more common getting at times over 10% of all connections failing to build.
Since about a week ago guard nodes are dying HARD (the metrics lag behind a week or so). Even the customized high powered guard nodes run by me has required IP rate blocking to just stay up and active (thanks to Toralf Förster for his torutils tools that saved me time).
i2p is up and working just fine. If you really need to get on Dread just use i2p. Premium members can use the private Tor mirror URL (located in the /d/lounge) which is stable and full speed as well.
Ads will yet again be extended after this DDOS attack is taken care of. The Tor network is starting to deteriorate quickly so expect occasional downtime and inaccessibility. Grab a new identity if you get timeout issues on Dread. If you try, it might take a couple minutes, you should still be able to access Dread. After you have successfully built a connection generally it should be solid for 10 minutes time until you need to build another one. POW is coming and this probably is a last ditched attemptof an DDOSER to extort darknet site admins. Either that or Russia and Iran str really putting the strain on the Tor network trying to prevent information exchange outside their borders. Needless to say, this problem is still here today.