The slowdowns and "too many connections" error messages is the same on my FFF IPB s3 forum at periods of time during the past several months. Its happening on all the s2 and s3 FFF IBP servers apparently, so the servers need to be worked on for fulltime good speed performance. The speed at times slows to a crawl and can get the error messages, then the speed comes back up but might take minutes or up to an hour.
The slowdowns and errors occur doing anything since its apparently slow server response, even just attempting to bring up the forum page in the browser, refresh a page, etc.
My forum link:
http://s3.forumforfree.com/nighthawk.html