Strange ip_conntrack values

[FS]

Hi,

When I run the command 

grep ^tcp /proc/net/ip_conntrack | awk '{print $4}' | sort | uniq -c

I get these lines ...

     26 CLOSE
     11 CLOSE_WAIT
    883 ESTABLISHED
     57 FIN_WAIT
     34 SYN_RECV
    116 SYN_SENT
  23720 TIME_WAIT

the TIME_WAIT number seems very strange ... network interrupts
increased a lot three months ago and I couldn't find an explanation
for this. The number of our visitors didn't increased like this ...

For example, before this "event", network interrups from MRTG, went
down to nearly 0 at 4 AM, but now even at this hour they are at 1000
....

We are under RH 7.2 
2.4.26

I hope you could help me ...

Thanks a lot,

John