Bitcoin client not receiving or confirming payments.

[djex]

I received a payment from BTCGuild a few hours ago and it hasn't gotten a single confirmation yet. I've restarted the client and still no luck. So I tried to send a payment from deepbit. I've waited an hour so far and no payment has been received. I'm getting very few connections to the network (1 - 2 connections). I haven't changed any thing with my computer or set up so I'm not sure what the problem could be.

Any one else experiencing this problem?

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[mewantsbitcoins]

There is a backlog of >1600 transactions. Be patient it will get there 

[djex]

How does that happen? Have we maxed out the speed that the bitcoin network can process transactions?

[X0nic]

There is a backlog of >1600 transactions. Be patient it will get there 

Is that a normal number? Or does it only happen sporadically?

[Sideways]

How many transactions can be in a block?

[Garrett Burgwardt]

Blocks are limited in size, but not in many transactions there can be. The bigger a tx, the lower priority it is. The larger a tx (value) the higher priority it is. There older the coins are, the higher the priority is.

So in this case, it's probably a small tx of newly minted coins. That means it is very low priority, and assuming btcguild didn't include a fee, it'll take a while to confirm.

And the backlog is a little high, but not bad.