Bitcoin Forum

Over the past weeks I have been having trouble connecting to the forum at least once a day and it normally lasts for 10 or 15 minutes.  Has this been occurring for everyone else here?  ???

I have been trouble connecting with Safari for the last hour or so. The error message seems to be '...Safari cannot establish a secure connection to to the server "bitcointalk.org"', although sometimes I get an error message something along the lines that the server is not responding.

I can access the forum just fine from other browsers.

dunno if it's the same problem as this, but lately I've been having some difficulty connecting to this site and this site only. it lasts for no more than 15 minutes but happens quite often, about once per two hour.

It's happen now, for the past hour. Really fast connection for a few minutes, then suddenly couldn't load any page for a few minutes. It's been like this for a few days.

I get the message "This webpage is not available
ERR_TIMED_OUT" on Google Chrome.

Well I don't really have a period of when I can't connect, but it becomes very slow. Yesterday morning and around midnight it was happening again.
I had some increased workloads and more tabs were reloading on the forums, but sometimes all got the timed out error.

It isn't that big of a deal, but it would be nice if this wasn't happening at all.

I have no problem to load the pages at all.

It looks like that the forum was down for maybe 20-30 minutes? I couldn't access it until 11:38 AM.
I've had several others member say the same.

Me too. When I was making a reply on another topic, it can't load, and I can't even return to the homepage... In fact I found this forum was running slow earlier today. Hope the problem will be solved soon.

Same with me.  Problem was happening pretty frequently yesterday, I didn't encounter it today (yet).

I have the same problem. Yesterday and today. Together with the the 503 error that happens all the time occassionally. But sometimes the forum gets very slow. This moves on until nothing moves anymore at one point and these testwebsites claim the forum is down for everyone.

I dont know whats the problem. DDOS?

Try opening about 15-20 tabs and refresh them 1 by 1, it will be very slow and sometimes shows the error. Either the forum is being attacked or this is some DDoS protection that is preventing too many requests.
It has been happening for a few days now. I didn't really notice it before.

Yes.

That would be the DDOS protection. I have read that every user is allowed to access the forum 1 second per request. With 20 simultaneous tabs you will meet that limit fast. But with normal browsing it should be practically impossible. Still it happens not seldom.

Though thats the 503 error. The 503 shows pretty fast. The other thing is a very slow forum and sometimes its not reachable at all. That shows not fast. It loads and loads and times out.

Guys this has been happening to me for the pass 4 days

Same here.  Viasat connectivity.

This is persistently happening in my case for some weeks now, and I just get used to it. I can load other pages perfectly fine; I can even watch 1080p videos without buffering but whenever I try to refresh bitcointalk.org, it just take ages for it to load, sometimes displaying "The Webpage cannot be displayed" screen. Tried 4 different browsers, but the problem still persists.

I don't think so. I'm pretty sure it takes you more than a second to switch tabs and click refresh (it is definitely more than a second; it's not like I'm trying to reload everything as fast as possible). Those requests usually process (10-20 of them) in a minute.
Shouldn't the forum be much faster than this even though I'm allowed 1 request per second?

While those pages are reloading, if I open another tab or try reloading something else I instantly get a 503 error (sometimes some of the pages that were reloading get a 503 as well).

what is this BCtalk. This site  ???
I would usually just say "this forum" or just spell it out.
I don't go to sites I am unfamiliar with after clicking on bitcoinforum on some's thread from here.

Yes, thats what i meant. Loading 20 pages in the same second should trigger the ddos protection but that doesnt explain this coming up in normal browsing. So either the ddos protection is set up too hard or the server is really overloaded or so.

i just got a 503 error refreshed and it came back then run into another one a few minutes after

Theymos,

It would be nice to know if you see any indication that these ongoing problems could be attributable to issues on your end or not (e.g., obvious DOS or whatever.)  As someone who is chronically paranoid about global scale monitoring and systems such as quantum inserts (http://www.wired.com/2015/04/researchers-uncover-method-detect-nsa-quantum-insert-hacks/) and such, it would be interesting information to me.

BTW, I know with some certainty that my ISP (Viasat or at least someone upstream) can and occasionally does do deep packet inspection and injections.

sorry for bumping the thread. but I want to ask if this still happens to anyone else. the connection just got a lot worse for me since yesterday.

Today is worse for me today than the last several.

Yeah, I can confirm this as well. I've encountered slow reload times several times today and sometimes the errors.
Yeah, but I have never loaded 20 pages in the same second, but did experience problems a lot of times. Something is definitely up with the servers. The forum was down for ~10 minutes the other night.

Broke as fuck, surprised when any of my replies actually post immediately.

Happened to me as well and just got a downtime of 1hr just minutes ago. Verified by isitdown site.

I've been having issues too. Sometimes it just says it can't connect, but sometimes it mentions the security....

This is the slowest website I can stand to use. Either it times out or just runs horribly slow...why can it not be fixed? Whoever is hosting this forum obviously is not equipped to handle it. Please find a decent provider or do something.

21 million BTC donation required.

I had not so much problems today but when i clicked on reply the forum loaded veeerrryy slow... :D

Anyway... i started to go through the forum now with 2 tabs. While i leave the one tab i let the next side load and read the thread on the other, then repeating. It saves time i otherwise will lose.

So far 503 happens even without having accessed faster than 1 second.

Edit: Nice post id. When the last 2 would have spread into two ones then it would be perfect. :)

happened to me a few times,and it really annoys me,i cant login to the site for 15 - 30 minutes and say the site is down
i really dont know what the hell is taking to fix the site,to be perfect

This has happened quite often to me over the past month or two.  It will last for about five minutes and then be okay for another five.  It seems when it happens it lasts for quite a long time.

These issues should be resolved for now.

The periodic downtime and slowness (including the recent ~30 minute outage) was due to the forum's previous anti-DDoS provider x4b.net. I used them because they're the only company I've found that offers the security of GRE tunnels at a reasonable price, but clearly it's not worthwhile. Finally I decided that the downtime was unacceptable and ditched them. For now I've set up a basic temporary anti-DDoS thing until I find a better alternative.

In the coming weeks there might be downtime as I try out various services.

Top-tier anti-DDoS companies charge several thousand dollars per month for GRE tunneling. The forum can afford this, but it still seems awfully high. If you know how to more affordably protect against DDoS attacks, let me know. I am not an expert in network engineering. (Is there some way to do something similar to anycast without having an AS number, maybe?) Note that the most popular solutions (like Cloudflare) are no good because:
- For security, I don't want to give the anti-DDoS service the forum's HTTPS private key unless there are strong legal agreements preventing them from misusing it.
- To reduce annoyances (especially for users of NoScript or Tor), I don't want the anti-DDoS service to modify forum pages in any way.
- I need user IP addresses. These are integral to the forum's anti-abuse measures.

Thanks for your work during middle of night at least in US.   I was wondering what was going on this explains it very well.

Kinda sad in this day and age people and companies having to spend money to stop stupid DDOS attacks.  I don't get why anyone running one would think they are achieving something.

At the very least they achieve that now people have to pay for protection against them.

Now lets take the tinfoil hat off and thank theymos that he is working on a solution. :D

I am no expert in the matter, however I would think that intercepting data sent to/from the forum would be against anti-wiretapping laws unless consented to by one or both parties; I would think that altering any content would be against computer hacking(?) laws. Neither of this is to say that giving Google access to HTTPS keys would not make it easier for an attacker like the NSA to misuse the keys in some way as despite Google's public stance against spying programs, they have apparently given a lot of information to various governments in secret.

I am not familiar enough with how cloudflare works regarding tor users, however I can say that most sites are pretty much inaccessible via tor. I also lack knowledge regarding the need to have user's IP addresses however it is possible some kind of custom agreement could be used with Google that allows these settings to be changed.

Thanks theymos for solving this. Maybe you can even get special offers for a big forum like that.


Though they would pay for the DDOS too and competition wouldnt. And a free market should solve the high price problem.

I dont see why the price is so high. Is it the traffic that has to be paid by them and its lower with easy solutions?

I don't think this is resolved as I and others are still having connection issues -  for example this thread. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1134846.0)

I hope you get a good service.

I was having a horrible time connecting yesterday, though from here, the forum was working perfectly today.

Lately i have not seldom the error message "Encrypted connection failed". Might mean the https. Since the error message is new i guess its related to the ddos-protection service theymos is testing?

503 happens often too of course. Didnt change on that front. :)

No problem here. I use regularly bitcointalk and don't remember to had problems in connecting or posting. The only my problem is to not be able to post very fast or very often because of my rank which allow me to post only one time every 360 seconds.

Maybe the problems were when I was eating or sleeping. Or playing with my daughters.

I have had lots of problems connecting this week, so many that I finally switched over to using TOR and the problems went away.  I guess it's just a sign to be more private.

Just a small update from my side; i was having issues with connectivity to forum for about a few weeks on daily basis, but today not a single
timeout or fault. So it's either fixed, or i was just lucky today, but i didn't do any changes to my DNS this time, or used VPN, the issue has
resolved itself if seams. I'm feeling optimistic.

cheers

Was just going to post about this very same thing, yes the database seems to be very slow at random times.

Dude what the heck does any of what you just said even mean???

On serious note - yes have been having trouble connecting to the forum for the last week or so. I'd imagine DDOS attacks are the culprit as usual.

I guess you test out another ddos protection service today, theymos?

Since today i have the problem that ALWAYS, when i send a post or a pm i get a blank page. When i reload the page then i get the info that it was sent already.

Only a headsup.

I provided a link about 'quantum inserts'.

I have had situations where my ISP supplied false information via http which did not originate from the IP address I had requested.

If I were hired to install gear which were capable of doing such packet manipulations, I would wish to test things out a bit, and perfectly capable of making mistakes upon unusual events, and it is during re-boots and upgrades (so it seems) where I've tended to see first hand effects as a down-stream user.  Furthermore, were I hired to deal with certain societal problems that the Internet may produce for leadership, I would absolutely mandate that more full control would be an option.  This would not be a simplistic 'internet kill switch' as is envisioned by most citizens.  Employing course techniques would cause more harm than good from a management perspective.

Yes, simple and 'innocent' DOS protection solutions have the potential to explain some of the artifacts I've noticed.  Such solutions are typically more associated with situations where they are commissioned by such folks as Theymos for the benefit of the site he runs.  ISP's could be another point where DDOS protections of other types are inserted and almost certainly are.  My goal in addressing Theymos in the note in question was to get him to provide information which could help analyze observations such as I've made.

Got a nginx error just now, like this site but sometimes it lags just too much

I'm having these Bad Gateway Ngnix problems now too.

,

Seams that we all get the same error, and in addition, i wasn't able to use the site at all from ~ 11 PM yesterday, until ~3 AM this morning,
at which point i gave up and went to sleep :/

cheers

Now i had one hour 503 and 502 errors and it was completely unreachable. Another DDOS attack going on?

forum maintenance it seems

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1152491.0

Thank you for posting.  I was checking in here to see if was me or something else from earlier. 

Happy to find it was not just me.  What is best way to know in advance of these?   Was the thread in meta the way others found out in advance?

I am getting this too. Sometimes it does not load at all period, other times takes 30 seconds, sometimes when replying to messages it times out or when I post it times out and I have to rewrite it. Something is wrong

The slow loading would be a great way to minimize the impact of frivolous posters (with ad campaign signature or not!) Imagine how many fewer bullshit posts would exist if the time limit or some delay were added every time someone wanted to write a post or start a new topic...you'd REALLY have to want to make that comment to wait through the delay or slow processing.

Just a thought...

Not really. I believe that the real forum users would be annoyed. They want to check their threads and have to reload and wait and so on.

The signature farmers would simply use 5 tabs, go in one, read, load the next thread, go to next tab while the previous is loading. And so on.

In fact i do it that way now because i don't want to wait until the forum is showing me something finally.

I think the loading problems won't really hinder the ones that see posting as work.

The downtime just now was due to a DDoS.

Hm... the forum finally runs a bit better. Thank you theymos for fixing it. :)

I hope you find a reliable ddos protection since the occassional server errors still remain.

I thought it was something to do with my connection. I thought it was just me who receives the 503 error earlier. How long has the downtime persisted? I tried to load bitcointalk for 15 solid minutes without anything, just 503 error.

I've been having troubles connecting to the site on and off for about an hour now, but it looks like everything is working fine now, so I'd say that the site was experiencing the DDOS attack during the last hour or so.

It was 502 errors and complete downtime for 30-60 minutes.

Is it only me or is bitcointalk veeeeery slow today? I have to use a number of tabs to be able to browse the forum at all, without having to spend a multiple of the normal time.

Is there a ddos going on or where does the slow speed comes from?

Bitcointalk.org is always slow for me for some reason. Sometimes PMs take minutes to send, but more or less its been loading pretty well.

Yes, it is always slow, or at least some requests take very long or have errors while others run through fine. But today it is really very very slow. That is definitely unusual for me. Though for some reason i don't get error messages besides timeouts today. Maybe it is another ddos service tested?

It's good that this thread became so old after his last answer but since there is no new thread yet...

The last 2 or 3 days i have bigger problems with the forum again. Alot 503 again and errors of not being able to create a secured connection.

Did the ddos-protection service change again or is there another explaination why the problems are worse now again?

I've also had some trouble connecting every now and then.
I use Safari on an iPad, and I get a server connection error. Most of the time it takes 3-4 refreshes to fix it. Not sure why it happens.

It's normal ; Maybe overloading of the server is causing these problems/issues/troubles. You may've known that thousands/lakhs of users access this forum. I've same problem but it doesn't lasts long so it isn't a big problem/issue/trouble.(for me)

Last time, some months ago, it was the ddos protection theymos used. He then tested some others and it was better then. Now we have the problems again, so maybe he changed the provider or something different happened. I don't see why we now should have alot more users suddenly so that it could explain the problems. It was fine the last months but the last days problems are worse again.

 i hope this forum will get better soon

Yup getting this error, But its Not frequent occuring like you, It usually occure here 1-2 times a Days some time it Show 502 error, and sometime its DNS problem which is I think from my Internet provider. This DNS type of problem I usually get when Im on gambling site and some other site.

Yeah 502 is back in town.

For me it's only 503 and secured connection failed all the time. And it is not only at a hour a day. It's all the time.

Yeah I get it nearly half the time...

It's really bothering when it's the moment I try to post something!