Forum slow?

[Syne]

No VPN or proxy here.

[C C]

Well, it is indeed "Error 500" and it's getting pretty bad when it takes fifteen minutes or more to finally make a post. If I ever disappear from here completely, it will probably be due to "Error 500" becoming ubiquitous 24/7.

[stryder]

Well, it is indeed "Error 500" and it's getting pretty bad when it takes fifteen minutes or more to finally make a post. If I ever disappear from here completely, it will probably be due to "Error 500" becoming ubiquitous 24/7.

I'm spotting the errors now. Seems to be down to the increase in bot traffic. I'll have to work out what I can do currently.

While it is possible to look to floating the site through Cloudflare, I don't really want to tie it to it as it does mean third party tracking. What I can do though is require people to be logged in to view posts/threads, although that does undermine how some people like to be able to just check in without logging in.

I would of liked to look at some methods using how and what is loaded as a metric, but unfortunately the site doesn't operate as a stack. Maybe some tinkering I could get it to behave that way, but it will take some time (not a 5 min job)

[stryder]

Okay I've made a couple of small changes, I have a few other tricks up my sleeve if I really have to but I'm trying to keep things from costing more. I will continue to look for ways to deal with any further issues.

[Syne]

Hitting Error 500 again.

Would there be any way to log log-in IP addresses and prioritize those when not logged in, and place a hard cap on all other logged out traffic?

[stryder]

There is a server load limit that currently I've not applied. Thats now being tweaked, it does mean people will drop quicker than normal but I'll see if there is a tweak I can do over who the limit effects the most. (guests over members)

The increase in IP's tends to be from the usual dodgy places. (Russia, China, Syria, Iraq etc), Which then leads to Singapore, Argentina, Brazil etc. A few Starlink addresses pop up too (likely not humans) So there is definitely a rogue network on the go at the moment.

I had notice that for about the last 4-5 months the sites bot/spider/ai bandwidth has been increasing exponentially (doubling each month)

[C C]

Dead Internet Theory has apparently been surpassed by Internet Replacement Theory, where websites now exist completely for bots rather than humans (in contrast to bots merely dominating creation and curation of web content).

[stryder]

I'm being pretty drastic with blocking IP's (or at least attempting to). I'd pose that the bots are the product of a state operator considering the nature of the attack. I don't think it's a straight forwards worm/botnet (As usually networks attempt to isolate their behaviour).

[Syne]

I guess all the LLMs have to get their training somewhere.

[stryder]

I guess all the LLMs have to get their training somewhere.

Most legitimate Chatbots/AI's tend to use similar methods to the old spiders/bots and Identify what they are. That I can respect and will allow (as long as it doesn't eat the whole site).
The problem with the load we've been having is that it's not legitimate, it's attempted to hide as innocuous traffic the problem is that the places from where it's pulled and the depth of what it's pulled gives away that it's a scraper (or many scrapers)

There seems to be a trend towards Russian as well as Islamic ties by the look of the majority of request locations.