(Technical) Server issues?

[Fuzzpaws]

Just curious,.


It seems the server goes offline at around the same time almost every day, normally around 7:30pm until 9:30pm, which is the prime time for for me to be able to be online.


Wondered if it was a preset time for the server to do updates or something??

[Fuzzpaws]

server kicked out again the last 2 nights right at 7:30-7:40 for a while...

[anoni]

This is a complicated problem to fix and it isn't actually the server going down, rather the server refusing your connection.


The basic reason for this is that we get DDoS'd quite a bit, this is when people spam the website with useless but time consuming requests in order to shut down the site. We have quite advanced anti-Dos protection, but this protection isn't perfect and it sometimes considered legitimate requests as bad and thus refuses to accept your connection. This occurs when you have a 500 error or a "bad gateway" error.


  If you're getting a 404 error, then the server has shut down.


  This issue is indeed very complicated and finding a good fix for it is quite difficult. If anyone has any suggestion it'd be interesting to hear.

[Firox]

I always wondered the same, hope something is found one day. Its always fun coming here on the forums.

[Fuzzpaws]

I BELIEVE (but will check) that it is a 404 issue. Will screenshot next time.


Thank you for the explanation... and for having the issue in work.

[Firox]

Most times i gets its 524

[Alessia Starfurr]

This is a complicated problem to fix and it isn't actually the server going down, rather the server refusing your connection.


The basic reason for this is that we get DDoS'd quite a bit, this is when people spam the website with useless but time consuming requests in order to shut down the site. We have quite advanced anti-Dos protection, but this protection isn't perfect and it sometimes considered legitimate requests as bad and thus refuses to accept your connection. This occurs when you have a 500 error or a "bad gateway" error.


  If you're getting a 404 error, then the server has shut down.


  This issue is indeed very complicated and finding a good fix for it is quite difficult. If anyone has any suggestion it'd be interesting to hear.

honestly I don't ever get one of those errors it either doesn't connec to SMF gives me some sort of message I will try to screenshot them in the near future.

[Firox]

it does help a bit at least knowing what it is, and whats causing it - next time it happens I'll get a snapshot of the error.

[Fuzzpaws]

Yep, it's a 524  I tried to screen shot it, but it didn't work on the home tower

[Firox]

524 Timeout Error





then I wait a while and try to refresh many times its followed by the
connection error





it's that way until the forums come back

[anoni]

Yeah 524 is also a DDoS attack

And since we get DDoS'd from time to time, it's most likely for it to be the cause. Cloudflare itself has a built-in DDoS protection, it's called "I'm Under Attack", and it works by showing a little prompt when the users connect to the servers during a DDoS attack, that prompt asks for the user to wait a few seconds, allowing the server to analyze the user's traffic to see if it actually is a human, and if it is, the user get redirected to the site normally, ignoring all the requests that the server think come from an attacker. Although I don't think it's the one currently in use, because I have never seen the prompt on the site. Maybe it was used before but it didn't work? I can't tell because I only joined in July.

This seems interesting, I didn't know about this system, I'll try talk to tweak to see what he thinks of it. IF it's default to cloudflare it may be something we can implement, but tweak may have reasons for not implementing it. Will keep you guys posted.

[Fuzzpaws]

Thank you!

[Firox]

Thanks, wish something was found that would help

[Firox]

gotten a different, similar error, is it also part of ddos attacks?

[anoni]

gotten a different, similar error, is it also part of ddos attacks?

Seems to be because of the 500 error