Large IP database banning

[theFAILURE]

Is there a limit to how many IP's you can have in the "user banning options" ?

Right now I have maybe 300 or so, including some wildcards.

[Bradley_Wint]

no... you could ban the whole world if you like...no limits.

[Lynne]

no... you could ban the whole world if you like...no limits.
Actually, it would depend on the column definition in the database. My guess is that the limit is defined by that. But, I don't know off the top of my head where it is defined in the database so I can't go look up the column type.

edit: ahha.... it is a mediumtext so only 16777215 characters. :D

[Bradley_Wint]

Actually, it would depend on the column definition in the database. My guess is that the limit is defined by that. But, I don't know off the top of my head where it is defined in the database so I can't go look up the column type.

edit: ahha.... it is a mediumtext so only 16777215 characters. :D
ah good point lol.

[Paul M]

The larger the list, the slower pages will load .....

[theFAILURE]

Thanks Paul, yes, I realized that it checks the list EVERY time a page is served, but so far with the huge list that I have, my forum has not noticed a performance hit.

I'm probably up to 500 ip's now.

I wonder if it would be better if I did this on the server level?

[Bradley_Wint]

theFAILURE - I like your display picture LOL

[snakes1100]

If your host allows you to use htaccess files on your account, place one in your root/public_html folder. This will prevent them from getting to the site period and save valuable mysql resources as well.

<Files ~ "404\.html">
Order Allow,deny
Allow from ALL
</Files>

Order Allow,Deny
Deny from iphere or domain or ip class 1.1.1.1 or 1.1.1 or 1.1
Deny from iphere
Allow from all

[theFAILURE]

Thanks a lot for the advice, but this is a dedicated IIs server :o

I agree though, doing it on the server level instead of forum level would save resources.

What I am doing at this point is blocking a couple countries from my forum.

theFAILURE - I like your display picture LOL

If you only knew the background of that avatar ;)

[snakes1100]

It helps when you post that info in the first place.

If its a dedicated IIS server, then edit the site properties in IIS manager and then click the directory security tab and set up the IPs there.

[theFAILURE]

Sorry about that, but "in the 1st place" I posted about the vB "user banning options", and the conversation went in a couple different ways.

Sorry to disturb you my friend, and thanks for the advice.

[snakes1100]

Don't take typing so literally...

The more querying you do on the DB the more mysql is going to hog server resources, apache/iis will handle that better. I would suggest a firewall really, but then again your on a winblowz server.

[theFAILURE]

It was more taken as Face Value than literal ;)

Thanks again for the advice, and I will definitely take that into consideration.

Right now what I have done is send the banned IP ranges to a specific OFFSITE page which has statistics.

I will know if all this is even worth it after about a weeks worth of gathered data.