Have you tried hellblock.net ? It hasn't crashed in the most recent two crashes. I was the only one on infection for both crashes .-.
I definitely have noticed. Crash every hour or so. Not sure if anyone else has the problem where 'downloading terrain' takes very long to load.
I agree that the servers should be updated. I have experienced many crashes - only one, which was yesterday since I've been apart of the server - but I have noticed that it takes a little while to download the terrain in some instances.
After reading a previous post made by Cypriot, I was lead to believe that the server actually isn't crashing, but rather is just a simple restart.