Hell at AW

[casgrain]

I don't know about anybody else, but right now, the site is hell.

[artlover]

Not sure what you mean, Casgrain. There has been controversy, yes, but surely that is not as bad as Hades.

[Luxman]

I don't know about anybody else, but right now, the site is hell.

Huh?

Perhaps you could explain a bit more in detail.

Lxm

[yusanord]

I don't know about anybody else, but right now, the site is hell.

Do you happen to have problems logging in and loading pages too, like I have had ? There was an hour or so I couldn't load the main page, forums just worked fine. Front Page loaded just fine, but I couldn't load the Member's Home page .

[mej]

There does appear to be a problem with the server. Please bear with us.

[Frans]

Imaginative title ;-)

Same problem here, traceroute shows no difference between forums and mainpage server. Since the forums work ok it can't be network then .

Ok.. server is not responding at all now, at least that's consistent

Wait... the www2.abbywinters.com works fine??? How on earth is that possible when it resolves to exactly the same IP-adres as www.abbywinters.com (72.232.6.220), load-balancer broken or something ?

-Frans

[casgrain]

Huh?

Perhaps you could explain a bit more in detail.

Lxm

Sorry, I should have explained more, but others had problem too, so the explanation got there anyway. It must have been the server again.

casgrain

[Eastwood28]

I tend to always have a lot of problems when I'm trying to load up pages (entering site, clicking next, etc.), but the quality of girls, the discussion boards, and the overall attentiveness of the people behind the scenes at AW (the level of interaction between those working for the site and we paying customers is truly amazing and commendable; never seen anything like it ) keep me clicking away until I get desired page/result.

[Rainbow]

We seem to be experiencing a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack, which is intermittent in nature (it comes and goes). You can learn more of the details about a DDOS attack here.

AW isn't made up of a single server; the load on the site is far too great for that. But through network administration and design magic, we make it look like one server to you (actually three if you really go poking around), and you never know the difference. In fact, there are a surprising number of servers (I don't feel free to advertise the specific number), and we periodically add more as the site grows. That you don't know about it, and that most of the time it runs without so much as canary chirp, is a testament to the skill of the development and administration team.

One of the problems with this approach, however, is that when a part of the system comes under attack, it might fail but other bits continue to work. Some of the problems reported have been that users have been unable to log in, or they log in once and the system takes them, then they click on something and they're magically logged out. Some new or newly-rejoining customers get their credit card charged by GMBill, but because not all the pieces of the system are working properly because of the attack, their accounts are not enabled correctly, requiring manual intervention to resolve. Of course the blank pages, SQL errors, and timeouts are all symptoms of this issue.

We carry extra bandwidth and capacity to handle these kinds of events, but in the end it's always an arms race: Who can beat whom, and if there's someone who really wants to mess with us, there's only so much we can do to stop them.

For example, if they want to flood us with ICMP ping requests, maybe we can change some things to make that not quite as much of an issue. If, for example, they decide to flood us with DNS requests, maybe we can make some changes around that too. Sometimes we can even beat floods of http (web) requests, but if they amass enough machines, they will eventually drown us out. The only thing we can really do in that situation is to ride it out and wait until they go away.

Yes, it's not fair to you or to us. Yes, it's a big pain in the butt. No, there isn't an easy way to stop an arms race, especially where one side is anonymous and hidden behind many layers of identity shielding.

We do, however, greatly appreciate everyone's patience and understanding while we ride this out. Eventually they will give up and move on to some other target. They always do.

Rainbow

[Aladin]

Thank you very much for your detailed explanation Rainbow!
I am sure everybody understand the type of situation you are facing...

A.

[Frans]

In fact, there are a surprising number of servers (I don't feel free to advertise the specific number)

There's some description in 'about Abby' though I suppose the numbers have gone up since then but the basic config sounds reasonable.

Something you could do to somewhat lower the impact of a DOS attack is prioritise (on the routers) traffic coming from known IP-numbers with which members have previously logged in. Those could change so it's not entirely 100% failsafe but it works to some degree. The numbers are logged as can be seen 'My AW'. The problem with server-attacks is that the only the server itself can recognize a valid member, but traffic handling in between gets to carry the dummy load regardless. Not sure your hosting provider would go for that solution though, it's their router after all ;-)

We do, however, greatly appreciate everyone's patience and understanding while we ride this out. Eventually they will give up and move on to some other target. They always do.

The thing that always puzzles me is that most DOS attacks don't serve any purpose besides obstructing traffic. All this effort to accomplish exactly nothing, weird.

Off to town now, you'll have pleeeenty of time to fix whatever the problem is, heh

-Frans

[drew001]

If this is Hell I don't want to go to Heaven!

[walrusman]

If this is Hell I don't want to go to Heaven!

I'll drink to that.

[sterling2]

And so won't "I" -a Bud please

[Abby]

The thing that always puzzles me is that most DOS attacks don't serve any purpose besides obstructing traffic. All this effort to accomplish exactly nothing, weird.

Like all vandals, their goal is to be annoying, and no more. It's probably a couple of Russian 13 year olds who'll grow bored soon.

[daimm9]

Thanks for keeping us in touch.
I have only had one period when I could not log in, and that only lasted a couple of hours.
Pity poor microsoft, who suffered a much larger attach that shut their whole network down for a several hours, I think it was about 2 years ago.

[Frans]

Interesting.. Opera9 which I use as primairy browser somehow remembered www.abbywinters.com as unreachable and got stuck like that. Cleaning it's cache (NOT the cookies) and restarting the browser fixed that. Must keep that in mind next time there appears to be a long term problem

-Frans

[grendel1097]

thanks for the update. I just re-clicked till I got through, but I was beginning to wonder what was going on.

[takochan]

Rainbow's excellent explanation clarified something that really had me puzzled -- namely why it was possible to access bits of the site and not others, and why access to the News page was possible only intermittently.

There was I wondering if I might have been exiled to the Gulag for shit-stirring...

Anyway, congrats to the team for such an obviously able and valiant fight against the Vandals, Visigoths and general butt-pains of cyberspace. And thanks for the brilliant explanation.

takochan

[browneyes]

ok, but is this part of the problem

1. I am asked to log in repeatedly... nuisance, but I still sleep fine.

2. When I try to go to next page, say 4 of the newest model to 5 of same model, I get page not found. I refresh(it works or does not) I refresh multiple times (it works or does not), I go back and try again (this always works )

3. When I try to login, I get page not found... I have to wait hours to get in, but I do. The withdrawals I go through are painful, but when The page come up all is right in the world.

4. Downloads are extremly slow, but this is only the past week or so, so I know it is not Rainbow or AW... hope you are not getting angry emails, it is not you... but I know some people like to shoot the messenger, I do not.

5. I know you are thinking of changing the video sizes, after more thought, I think 1 lafge file is a bad idea. Several smaller files give one more flexability.

6. I know you are asking about xtra lrg pic/images files. I do not use them, in part because they overfill my screen. I guess I am not savy enough to figure out how to use a viewer at my end that would easily use lrg files.... any ideas?

7. Speaking of viewers at my end, is there a slide show style avaible to use/see? When I first see a new models set it is... hummm.. (am I lazy) a way to scroll through the set in a slide show fashion. I not I can hit next but the pic overfills my screen and I have to pg up/dn lf/rt ....
sigh... life is so hard.

8. I have more questions but I am feeling page not found myself... time to refresh

Ciao

Browneyes

[Eastwood28]

Browneyes, I think you said it (what I've wanted to say, but didn't know how to put so eloquently) perfectly. I co-sign with everything you wrote up there--especially #2, #6, #7.

[Frans]

1. I am asked to log in repeatedly... nuisance, but I still sleep fine.
2. When I try to go to next page, say 4 of the newest model to 5 of same model, I get page not found. I refresh(it works or does not) I refresh multiple times (it works or does not), I go back and try again (this always works )

3. When I try to login, I get page not found... I have to wait hours to get in, but I do. The withdrawals I go through are painful, but when The page come up all is right in the world.

Problems 1,2 and 3 can be caused by whatever type of network overload/attack is currently happening to the servers hosting AW. Their hosting firm will more than likely have an investigation running towards this problem. The only 'good' thing about a prolonged DOS attack is that damages over $5.000 justify a federal investigation (FBI).

6. I know you are asking about xtra lrg pic/images files. I do not use them, in part because they overfill my screen. I guess I am not savy enough to figure out how to use a viewer at my end that would easily use lrg files.... any ideas?

Depends on how you define 'easily use', you want to resize them to fit your screen? AcdSee or IrfanView will do that easily, as will Internet Explorer 6 by default if you view the picture in a seperate window. I don't use extra-largs pics for the same reason, the normal pics don't fit entirely on my screen already (19" TFT @ 1280x1024) ;-) Am planning to open a topic asking what people do with those extremely large pics.. printing a poster perhaps ? ;-)

7. Speaking of viewers at my end, is there a slide show style avaible to use/see? When I first see a new models set it is... hummm.. (am I lazy) a way to scroll through the set in a slide show fashion. I not I can hit next but the pic overfills my screen and I have to pg up/dn lf/rt ....
sigh... life is so hard.

IrfanView (which is free) can do slideshows. Can't see I've used that feature much it's there ACDSee can open archives and you can do a slideshows from there, even easier

If you want to do the viewing all inside the webbrowser, Opera9 can do it with some configuration changes.
That would resize the entire page to your browser-window, but obviously that doesn't show the pictures in the best possible way. Opera can be configured to press a 'Next >' button when you press space, it's meant for forum browsing but should work for picture viewing as well.

-Frans

[Abby]

Thanks FransAW

[Dekoda]

If this is Hell I don't want to go to Heaven!

Well, see, in heaven, when you click on the thumbnail, the actual model appears in front of you, and strikes the same pose that you clicked on.