By default Apache only allows upto 150 connections, if the number is over, you will be in the queue. It will look like the server is down.
The limit for server is usually configured in the following files:
/etc/apache2/apache2.conf /etc/apache2/mods-available/mpm_worker.conf /etc/apache2/mods-available/mpm_prefork.conf
This is the content to update:
ServerLimit 600 StartServers 10 MinSpareThreads 75 MaxSpareThreads 250 ThreadLimit 64 ThreadsPerChild 32 MaxRequestWorkers 600 MaxConnectionsPerChild 800