Anyone else having difficulties connecting to AIM using Messages?

For the past day or so, Messages refuses to connect to my AIM account. I have iChat accounts using my old .Mac and MobileMe IDs that work relatively well (in spite of frequent disconnects). Many of my professional contacts are on my legacy AIM Buddy List, and now I can't access them.

I checked Console, and this is what I see:

2012-08-28 12:13:00.589 PM imagent[207]: [Warning] [AIM] Could not change my statusURL to

2012-08-28 12:13:00.592 PM imagent[207]: [Warning] [AIM] Could not change my statusURL to

2012-08-28 12:48:54.969 PM imagent[207]: [Warning] [AIM] Could not change my statusURL to

I also tried logging into www.aim.com, but the site logs me out as soon as I log in.

Has this happened to anyone else?

With respect to the disconnects I mentioned above, Messages on both my 2011 15" MacBook Pro and my mid-2008 24" iMac seem to disconnect from most online services (e.g. GoogleTalk, AIM, Jabber) whenever I walk away from my computer for a few minutes. The accounts that use the AOL servers (AIM, .Mac and Mobileme) disconnect frequently, even when I'm sitting in front of the computer. It would appear that my account gets banned for too many disconnects after a while, to the point that I can't reconnect unless I wait a long time. I've read other complaints about this in the Support Communities.

It's as if my network connection is unstable and causes timeouts and disconnects in the background. I've followed some tips I found on the web, including deleting the affected accounts and changing the MTU value in my Network settings.

Has anyone had any communication with Apple that indicates they recognize networking/connection issues affecting Messages, or that they may be working on a fix?

R.