Forum Disruption

[garioch7]

For two days, over the weekend, I experienced huge delays trying to access this Forum, and a ton of "bad gateway" errors. The "Is It Down Right Now" website said the Forum site was rejecting incoming traffic.

I am presuming that the bad guys were hammering the Forums. I looked for notice here on the Forums that it was not just me experiencing this issue, but there was no such notice.

If it was just not me, I think that, in the future, when the site becomes unresponsive, a notice should be posted. I wasted a lot of time trying to get in. I even tried sending a PM to @gingbat, but that never went through, and errored out.

Was it just me here in Canada that was affected?

Have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

[Digerati]

There were some changes to the way logins were handled to help limit spammers and bots. And those changes affected most users. But that did not cause any bad gateway errors - at least not for me. And there's been some tweaking of those changes since to make it easier for folks already registered. But again, no bad gateway errors - at least not for me.

FTR, I'm on CDT (Chicago time) so you are just 2 hours ahead of me. There could have been something going on that I was just lucky to miss.

I think that, in the future, when the site becomes unresponsive, a notice should be posted.

That would be nice but it assumes the site administrators are aware of the problem. It also assumes they are able to log in - which, if the middle of the night, might be something they would have to do remotely from home.

Bad Gateway typically means the server received an invalid response from an inbound server. That means it could have been your ISP's server was sending the invalid response - thus only affecting those using your same server. And since Firetrust is way "down under", it could have been one of several servers ("hops") between you and them.

And plus, there are over 18,000 members of this forum. If the site suddenly pushed out 18,000 messages, that might be seen by some systems as spam, or at least impact their providers servers negatively.

To me, about the only time it really makes sense for the site to send out such messages is with "scheduled" down time.

[gingbat]

Yea, not sure we can do much about this sorry, Nick is working on ways to reduce this at the moment, but it is a bit of trial and error so hopefully once all the setup bugs are ironed out, the antispammer measures he's adding will resolve this....

[garioch7]

@Digerati,

I was not suggesting that the Forum send out messages. I was only suggesting a post on the Forum indicating that Firetrust was aware of an issue.


If new changes to curb the plague of spammers and bots are being introduced, it would be helpful to know that in advance, so members can be aware of potential rough sailing for a few days until things get ironed out.

In any event, I hope it was not just me who was singled out for two days!

Have a great one.

Regards,
Phil

[Digerati]

I was not suggesting that the Forum send out messages. I was only suggesting a post on the Forum indicating that Firetrust was aware of an issue.

I agree that would be nice but again, it assumes admin is aware of it. And since they most likely are sound asleep in NZ while we in this part of the world are wide awake, they may not be aware until long after the issue is cleared - and that's assuming they can even see the issue. They may not go through the offending server and folks in other regions do.

Plus, if you can't access the site, not sure what good a notice posted on the site would do.

If new changes to curb the plague of spammers and bots are being introduced, it would be helpful to know that in advance

I hear you there too. But is it wise to announce to the world (including the bad guys) that you are implementing new security measures to stop those bad guys? IDK.

If this were my bank and I could not access my money to pay my bills or buy my groceries, then I definitely would agree with you. But having access to these forums 24/7/365 does not meet that critical level for access - at least not in my opinion.

[garioch7]

@digerati,

It is clear that you disagree with my suggestion. I did not intend to initiate a debate. I intended to make a suggestion.

With that said, I am out of this topic.

Regards,
Phil

[Digerati]

Then sorry, but you did not understand my reply. I agreed and said it would be nice if we could be notified in some way that Firetrust is aware of the problem. So it is not that I disagree. It is that I don't see how it would be practical, or even possible if the site is having issues or is "unresponsive".

That said, I have been getting a bunch of Bad Gateway errors today, with error messages indicating a problem with the "Host" at "forum.firetrust.com". And to that, and for sure, I do NOT know for a fact one way or another, but I am assuming Firetrust does not host their own severs but instead uses a hosting provider. So not sure they have any control over these issues at all. In fact, I suspect they are just as, if not more frustrated than the rest of us. Only difference is we can move on to other activities. They can only sit and pace back and forth until their host providers resolve the issues.

[garioch7]

@gingbat,

Earlier this week, "Is It Down Right Now" reported the server was not responding, so I could not log in. Today, the site is glacially slow, as in taking over a minute to respond to clicks.

Do you have any idea when things will stabilize here, and what's causing these issues?

Thank you, and have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

[Digerati]

FWIW, I too am getting horrible response times with several Bad Gateway errors in between. Not sure where garioch7 goes through but the Bad Gateway errors say my end is good and Kansas City Cloudflare is "Working". But the host cannot be found at FT.

[garioch7]

I sure hope that "the Big Cheese" finishes his testing soon. This site is frequently extremely sluggish.

Have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

[Digerati]

Yeah, it has been particularly slow this morning. I'm not sure this is all due to testing, however. But then I don't know much about hosting a forum either.