Connecting to BCTalk.org

[manstopper]

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

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[tvbcof]

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 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.

[--Encrypted--]

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.

[tvbcof]

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.

[Lauda]

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.

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.

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.

[TheButterZone]

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

[DiscoverCebu]

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

[MakingMoneyHoney]

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

[Blazed]

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.

[TheButterZone]

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.

[SebastianJu]

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

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.

[Joca97]

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? 

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

[PenguinFire]

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.

[theymos]

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.

[notlist3d]

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.

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.

[shorena]

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.

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.

[Quickseller]

- 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.

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.

[SebastianJu]

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

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

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?

[galbros]

These issues should be resolved for now.

I don't think this is resolved as I and others are still having connection issues - for example this thread.

I hope you get a good service.

[MakingMoneyHoney]

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