Does seti go down often?

I have been running seti only for about 123hours,but i have noticed it has periods where it runs slower at times or stops altogether, is this normal?

If you are talking about the actual SETI screensaver running at a different pace every now and then, it's because it takes a back seat to anything else that you are doing on your pc. For example , if you are running a game then that will take priority and will result in a work unit that has taken much longer to complete. If the only thing that is running is SETI, then your WU will finish in the shortest time that your processor is capable of doing it in.
If you are talking about uploading units to the SETI server, then yes there has been a problem lately, but this is a rare occurance that seems to have been sorted now.
I hope this has answered your question. It might help to check out our SETI@home index
www.abovetopsecret.com...
there are links to threads there with a lot of helpful information.