Problem with inetd and pop3d looping

[Bill <wae innova net>]

I am running RH5.0 with 2.0.34 kernel. Recently we have seen an increase
in the number of failures of ipop3. The message below was in the
messages file. 

Aug 24 11:25:46 ns1 inetd[561]: pop-3/tcp server failing (looping),
service terminated 

It seems to happen about once an hour under heavy load. Does anyone have
any ideas as to why this started occuring? The problem occurs running a
stock 2.0.30 kernel.

Bill Edmonson