Anyone getting slammed with huge number of guests?
 

Forum load alarm went off a few minutes ago. Load was over 30. Seems the number of guests was 2800. Truncated the sessions table and set usergroup "Unregistered" to be unable to view forum and threads.

Anyone else seeing this and is there a better way to handle it?

I too have received a load alarm through my host but my load was from 39-89 with 4 cpus. I just added two more cpus for a total of 6.

Recently I had to block pingdoms ip range because, I guess, someone set up an account to either ping or crawl my forum every hour or less. I cut down 300-400 guests by doing this. If you need .htaccess Ip range I blocked:

order allow,deny
deny from 5.178.78.77
deny from 23.22.2.46
deny from 23.111.152.74
deny from 27.122.14.7
deny from 37.252.231.50
deny from 43.225.198.122
deny from 43.229.84.12
deny from 46.20.45.18
deny from 46.165.195.139
deny from 50.16.153.186
deny from 50.22.90.227
deny from 50.23.94.74
deny from 52.0.204.16
deny from 52.24.42.103
deny from 52.48.244.35
deny from 52.52.34.158
deny from 52.52.95.213
deny from 52.52.118.192
deny from 52.57.132.90
deny from 52.59.46.112
deny from 52.59.147.246
deny from 52.62.12.49
deny from 52.63.142.2
deny from 52.63.164.147
deny from 52.63.167.55
deny from 52.73.209.122
deny from 52.89.43.70
deny from 52.197.31.124
deny from 52.197.224.235
deny from 52.198.25.184
deny from 52.201.3.199
deny from 52.209.34.226
deny from 52.209.186.226
deny from 52.210.232.124
deny from 54.68.48.199
deny from 54.70.202.58
deny from 64.120.6.122
deny from 64.237.49.203
deny from 64.237.55.3
deny from 67.228.213.178
deny from 69.59.28.19
deny from 69.64.56.47
deny from 69.64.56.153
deny from 70.32.40.2
deny from 72.46.130.42
deny from 72.46.140.106
deny from 72.46.140.186
deny from 72.46.153.26
deny from 76.72.167.90
deny from 76.72.171.180
deny from 76.72.172.208
deny from 76.164.194.74
deny from 78.31.69.179
deny from 82.103.128.63
deny from 82.103.139.165
deny from 83.170.113.210
deny from 85.17.156.11
deny from 85.17.156.76
deny from 85.17.156.99
deny from 85.25.176.167
deny from 85.93.93.123
deny from 85.93.93.124
deny from 85.93.93.133
deny from 89.163.146.247
deny from 89.163.242.206
deny from 94.247.174.83
deny from 95.141.32.46
deny from 95.211.198.87
deny from 95.211.217.68
deny from 95.211.228.65
deny from 96.31.66.245
deny from 103.47.211.210
deny from 108.62.115.226
deny from 109.123.101.103
deny from 158.58.173.160
deny from 159.8.146.132
deny from 162.218.67.34
deny from 168.1.92.58
deny from 173.248.147.18
deny from 173.254.206.242
deny from 174.34.156.130
deny from 174.34.162.242
deny from 174.34.224.167
deny from 175.45.132.20
deny from 178.255.152.2
deny from 178.255.153.2
deny from 178.255.154.2
deny from 178.255.155.2
deny from 184.75.208.210
deny from 184.75.209.18
deny from 184.75.210.90
deny from 184.75.210.226
deny from 184.75.214.66
deny from 185.39.146.214
deny from 185.39.146.215
deny from 188.138.40.20
deny from 188.138.118.144
deny from 188.138.118.184
deny from 188.138.124.110
deny from 199.87.228.66
deny from 204.152.200.42
deny from 207.244.80.239
deny from 208.43.68.59
deny from 208.64.28.194
deny from 209.126.117.87
deny from 209.126.120.29
deny from 211.44.63.35
allow from all

As you can see they use a lot of ip numbers which show as guests.

Enjoy,
William

Thanks, William.:up:

Edit: something odd is going on. Our forum averages 30 new members a day. Yesterday we had 49, today so far 90+:eek:

Hello,

You can always ask them. Perhaps consider asking a few of them how they came to your site. It only takes a viral article etc on Reddit etc where lots of people find your site. I do not know if you use some form of analytics but you may want to check it. The information usually shows referrals etc.

Enjoy,
William

Ok, good idea.

CloudFlare seems to solve that problem for me. I remember when I used to get a random surge of bots and that almost went in the thousands at some point. It could of been a DDoS attack though.

I got huge traffic with real visitors and also bots on our forum but if you are using a VPS, increase RAM and install a caching solution then it can solve the problem high load on your forum.