^ Indeed .... however, consider the source of whom you are arguing with SF.
WWS -- are you just getting pings or actual attempts to backdoor? What type of notification are you getting about the attempts? And, how many hops are they using to get to you? It may just be a random "ping -a" or "ping -t" that is constantly hitting since it has found a valid address that is actively running (I would assume) DNS. Have you considered a black out of that entire octect? Are you able to set up your servers to spoof their IPs so what is out to the world is not real? (As in, put them behind a router so the IP is split and comes out with some BS 192.168 ...)
At any rate, is this what is causing the bog down lately?
Reply from blahblahblah: bytes=32 time=63ms TTL=115
It is better than it was ... but, still slightly slower than usual.