[X] My Assistant

[Assassynn]

Users has jumped from around 320~ to 460~, and guests from 100~ to 250~ in the last five minutes, what the hell's going on?

[Running On Ice]

I think the Users Online going up has to do with the site going down. It would sometimes do that after the backup, and once it gets back online, a bunch of inactive users are suddenly "on" for a few minutes.

[7eeveelutions]

I'm beginning to wonder if the server lag is related to some kind of Denial of Service attack, considering how much the Users Online count goes up when the server goes down. The problem with the theory is that this isn't happening continuously but rather every few days...... and I don't see why someone would attack for only an hour or two every few days :/

It would really be great if the admins or at least a mod would say something about this.

[AdmiralPerry]

I'm beginning to wonder if the server lag is related to some kind of Denial of Service attack, considering how much the Users Online count goes up when the server goes down. The problem with the theory is that this isn't happening continuously but rather every few days...... and I don't see why someone would attack for only an hour or two every few days :/

It would really be great if the admins or at least a mod would say something about this.

I had the same thought earlier, actually. Though I don't know a lot about DDoS attacks, so... Also been having problems with loading my Pokedex tonight. Usually a few refreshes work, but now I can't get it to load at all.

Also seconding the wish for some clarification on what's going on. I'm sure the staff team is on it--they're pretty good about these kinds of things. Just like to know what's happening.

[Kamizard]

And after the reset happened, the site went back to normal. Weird...

[Hannawolf]

I came here looking for some answers. I had had a few problems the past couple days, but mostly didn't think anything about it because I usually was mobile for a few minutes. But I just tried to sit and do click backs to level a Scavenger Hunt Pokemon through the Pokewalker, and between 504s and errors when I went to the Berry Feeder on mobile... I think the Pokemon's like level 5. I usually could have gotten it done.

EDIT: The error part, not the site back up part. That is weird, though.

This post has been edited by Hannawolf: Oct 22 2014, 11:10 PM

[7eeveelutions]

I'm beginning to wonder if the server lag is related to some kind of Denial of Service attack, considering how much the Users Online count goes up when the server goes down. The problem with the theory is that this isn't happening continuously but rather every few days...... and I don't see why someone would attack for only an hour or two every few days :/

It would really be great if the admins or at least a mod would say something about this.

I had the same thought earlier, actually. Though I don't know a lot about DDoS attacks, so... Also been having problems with loading my Pokedex tonight. Usually a few refreshes work, but now I can't get it to load at all.

Also seconding the wish for some clarification on what's going on. I'm sure the staff team is on it--they're pretty good about these kinds of things. Just like to know what's happening.

I'm by no means an expert, but there was that incident with the malware this summer redirecting everyone to adult websites, and I would bet that could have done something that has to do with a DDoS attack (opening a backdoor or something, though I don't know if a DDos really needs a backdoor). If it is indeed an attack, I don't think there's much the staff can do about it since it originates from outside the server.

I was having Pokedex problems earlier too, couldn't get it to work either. Probably not a related problem though.

[Cajun]

DDoS is effectively thousands of people using the site at once. It doesn't need any sort of backdoor, though it might affect the guests online stat.


Bit of a sidenote, but anyone know why there's always a hundred or so guests online? People logged out but lurking?

[The Majestic Mr ...]

I'm beginning to wonder if the server lag is related to some kind of Denial of Service attack

Weird, a favorite YouTuber of mine had a sudden DDoS attack during his Minecraft stream a day or so ago. I seriously doubt the two are related, but I have no clue as to how DDoS attacks work.

It would really be great if the admins or at least a mod would say something about this.

Yes, I'm inclined to agree. It'd help if they'd at least tell us they're looking into it.

Right now I'm not getting any lag, but my GPX+ did turn into the white page again...

This post has been edited by The Majestic Mr L: Oct 23 2014, 04:30 PM

[Burichu]

I don't think it's a DDoS attack. FA just went through one for three days straight and it basically rendered their server useless because no one was able to connect, thus the site was down that entire time.
I'm more willing to bet someone (or multiple someones) is being naughty and using a bot or something. It just strikes me as very odd that the times when the server hiccups have been around the same times every day.

This post has been edited by Burichu: Oct 23 2014, 09:10 PM

[7eeveelutions]

DDoS is effectively thousands of people using the site at once.

Not necessarily. It just requires enough users to overload a server. For a low-end server that only sees a couple hundred connections at once, doubling the number of connections might be enough to cause problems.

Of course, GPX and GTS used to have far more people connecting than they do now and I doubt the admins downgraded their servers since those times, so that alone shouldn't be enough to prevent connections.

I'm honestly not sure what to think, partly since the staff has been so quiet about it.

[Cajun]

There also wasn't a Berry Feeder then. 300 pings a minute wasn't exactly doable when you clicked eggs one at a time. Perhaps the same server's just eating 10x the traffic from 1/5th the crowd. Double the crowd and it collapses.

[Hiraelle]

Aaaaaand it's horrible today. Any news ?

[Doom Hunter]

Ok, it's back AGAIN. Time to get this across to the admins if not done already....

[Kamizard]

I don't think I've ever seen it lag like this at this time of night before. Worth noting that there are ~500 users and ~300 guests online at this point, which is also much higher than usual for this time.

[khan noonien sin...]

i had the same thing happen yesterday as well as in the wee hours of this morning, CST. often when this happens, it takes over an hour for the site to become relatively usable, but really laggy and still get a white page every now and then. i've also noticed that before the 504 and 502 errors begin, i find a lot of pop-up errors in-site that i have to refresh to get rid of. pages will lag a few seconds each click, then BAM, nothing. site unusable.

I think it would help to invest in adding another server to take care of the excess data for the sudden high traffic during peak hours, like after school (typically 3:00-4:00pm using North American timezones), and after work (5-6pm).

[Kamizard]

Yeah, it went on for about three hours earlier this afternoon. Then it let up, but the site was still fairly laggy on my end (taking at least 5 seconds to load each page, which is annoying when trying to feed Pokemon) for the rest of the night. Around reset, it worked fine again. And now we're back to this...

This is roughly the same amount of traffic the site gets during SWSH if I'm not mistaken, so I'm not sure if it's a traffic overload or what. Unless it's a variable server and hasn't been upgraded to handle these random traffic spikes? Assuming, of course, it's not some kind of attack or someone using a naughty bot. I'm no expert on server stuff.

[Doom Hunter]

Actually, this is MUCH worse than usual, even for SWSH traffic, and if it ever got that high we'd still be operating normally. There is something very wrong at work here...someone hacking GPX perhaps....

[Kamizard]

It could be some kind of caching issue (if I recall correctly because again I'm no expert on this stuff so I don't even know what a caching problem really is). I help out on a site and we had that problem. We treated it as a DDOS attack for a couple of weeks before realizing it was actually a plugin or some code that didn't want to work with the site. Basically any time a blog was posted and people visited the site to read it all at once, the site would generate a bunch of visitors based on all the connections. It added the new connections on top of old ones and flooded the site, taking it down completely within minutes. I'm not sure if that's what's happening here (probably isn't), but you never know.

[Mamanator]

Today, 11/5/14, I'm having this same issue and it's effecting my timed Poke Hunt requirement. I'm just now trying to evolve my entry but it keeps coming up with "There was an error; please try again later." What concerns me is that, if I run out of time to evolve this Pokemon entry it will penalize my chances of placement in the Poke Hunt.

Any suggestions?