Constant Disconnects

This issue started about 5 days ago (October 28th). Disconnects were happening about every half hour to everyone on the server. It has progressively gotten worse. Currently, it happens every 2-3 minutes and the game is pretty much unplayable. Every disconnect gives me the following error: "Internal Exception: io.netty.handler.timeout.ReadTimeoutException".

After a couple of disconnects, I get a different error message and then I am no longer able to join any servers for a while. "Failed to login: the authentication are currently down for maintenance."

Any help resolving this issue would be greatly appreciated.

edit// It looks like I'm only getting disconnected when I'm running around possibly generating new terrain. I just sat atop a column of dirt for 30 minutes and didn't get disconnected. The minute I started running accross the terrain I got disconnected.

edit #2// Error only encountered while exploring new content/chunks. Seems stable if I stay in old areas.