Check out this TUTORIAL http://www.zoominternet.net/~lazydog/iptables- tutorial.html#RECENTMATCH
I do not seem to be making myself clear. I do not need a tutorial on how to use the recent module of iptables. The recent module itself seems not to be available on this particular host anymore. There seems a problem with the module itself and it will not load even if I try to do this manually using modprobe.
I will revert to the previous kernel as soon as I can and see if the problem disappears, as I think likely.