Thread: Slow forum?

  1. #1
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    Question Slow forum?

    The forum has been slow to the point of being unusable the past week. Takes me about 5-10 seconds to get a handshake, 30-40 seconds for the page the render (if I'm lucky and the request don't just die).

    Looks like it's not just me. I wonder what's going on.

  2. #2
    and the hat of int overfl Salem's Avatar
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    This is what's going on.

    There are currently 7379 users online. 3 members and 7376 guests
    Most users ever online was 10,455, 1 Day Ago at 08:54 AM.

    The normal load is around 300 or so.

    The rest are hordes of chinese scrapers (or a DDoS attack) that's been going on now for several weeks.
    Webmaster is aware of the problem, but so far there seems to be no effective solution.
    I see the 10K users is a new high score

    Just wish they'd all go and FOAD.
    If you dance barefoot on the broken glass of undefined behaviour, you've got to expect the occasional cut.
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  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Salem View Post
    The rest are hordes of chinese scrapers (or a DDoS attack) that's been going on now for several weeks.
    Webmaster is aware of the problem, but so far there seems to be no effective solution.
    Hummmm... So, that's why I got problems loading pages here? (most of the time I got a timeout response!)...

  4. #4
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    Ah so that's why, I see. I contacted the webmaster and he said something about "scraping effort" but I totally misread that as something he is doing himself to free the forum/db of old cruft.

    Makes you wonder if one could temporarily block an IP range, or of the flood comes from diverse sources. I doubt the board has any noticeable number of regular Chinese visitors, unlike e.g. Indians.

  5. #5
    misoturbutc Hodor's Avatar
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    Considering that the forum is essentially unusable for legitimate users I'd be adding DROP rules for the entire of China.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hodor View Post
    Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor Hodor
    I feel the same. Does the admin need help? I'm going to assume that whoever is sending all these queries isn't so sophisticated that static or dynamic block rules couldn't be put into place. I don't recommend trying to "sit this out", machines have a longer breath than humans.

  7. #7
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    Having used the forums before, this being the second time, it actually got me a bit surprised that the number of users browsing the forums averages at around 6000 users like it has over the last one or two days.

    In fact, opened this sub-forum to inquire about the high number of users browsing only to find that this is what is causing high loading times.

  8. #8
    Administrator webmaster's Avatar
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    @Hodor - oh, that's actually a very good idea. Let me try just blocking everything from Chinese IPs and see if that makes a difference.

  9. #9
    C++ Witch laserlight's Avatar
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    Seems to be working for now.
    Quote Originally Posted by Bjarne Stroustrup (2000-10-14)
    I get maybe two dozen requests for help with some sort of programming or design problem every day. Most have more sense than to send me hundreds of lines of code. If they do, I ask them to find the smallest example that exhibits the problem and send me that. Mostly, they then find the error themselves. "Finding the smallest program that demonstrates the error" is a powerful debugging tool.
    Look up a C++ Reference and learn How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

  10. #10
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    @webmaster Did you check your logs for origin of traffic? If the board was hammered by small number of IPs, then setting up something like fail2ban would be safer bet for the future, assuming this was a deliberate DDoS attempt. The number of permissible requests per IP can be reasoned about.

  11. #11
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    Here, in my country, mega.nz was blacklisted in most telephone operators... To my surprise, Cloudflare isn't resolving the name as well... So, I change my DNS to Google...

    Well... after that, this forum became a LOT faster!

  12. #12
    misoturbutc Hodor's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by flp1969 View Post
    Here, in my country, mega.nz was blacklisted in most telephone operators... To my surprise, Cloudflare isn't resolving the name as well... So, I change my DNS to Google...

    Well... after that, this forum became a LOT faster!
    I've found the last few days fine. For the previous couple of weeks the forum was reporting at least 8000 simultaneous users and up to 10000. Now it's back to a reasonable 300-500

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