Wouldn't the shares from the other p2pools cause it to go back to a high-usage state?
[Edit]:
What if there was a way to block a user after they submit a bad share (thats higher than target), for at least 30 seconds?
My guess is to help protect against attacks (floods, etc) with basic usage most people only need ~200 connections at once, but that's why they are changeable (on most OS's).
It seems your p2pool's are missing some global p2pool hashrates.
Try adding a node that's connected into the network to help bootstrap the rest.
--p2pool-node drk.p2pmine.com:8999
http://drk.p2pmine.com:7903/ is at the latest.
--p2pool-node drk.p2pmine.com:8999
It's possible there are other nodes or the ports have changed.
http://p2pmine.com/nodes.php has a list of all our p2pool nodes.