Hello:
I saw this strange load today on the Apache screen in Longview for one of my sites that starts around 9:00am:

The number of requests and throughput seem to be the same, but for some reason the number of workers sending and waiting has gone way up.
The dip around 12:00 is because I tried restarting Apache to see if that helped, it didn't.
The only changes to the server recently are standard updates.
It's a 2048 Linode running Ubuntu 13.10 - everything else seems to be running as normal.
Almost all of the accesses are from Digital Signage players, the web load is pretty steady 24/7, there really are not any major fluctuations like a normal website. A quick check of the logs does not really show any extraneous traffic.
Any one have any suggestions as to what might be going on?
Thanks as always!
John