Just seen this for server:

R17 all being well will hit your servers in the morning, so yes your servers will go down some time between 6am and 12pm Friday 23rd July, Sorry in advance if it clears the server but the good news is they have fixed something else they broke in a previous patch

on top of this is the whitelist so you don't wind up on a cracked/modified server by accident.

anyway, below is the blurb from Mr Kalms at DICE.

· Infantry-only mode is bugfixed (some vehicles would still spawn on a few maps, this has been fixed)

· DICE is implementing an IP whitelist. The main purpose for this is to ensure that regular players don’t end up on servers where the scoring has been modified, or which claim to have PunkBuster running but allow people without PunkBuster to play. When your upgraded to Server R17, you know that your server’s IP is on the IP whitelist.

THX for that... although I dont fully understand how the server ip whitelist works

Seems like the dedi serevr files got leaked and where cracked. So they now made a whitelist of legal servers.