We are being hit from IP's originating mainly in Russia and some from China and the Ukraine.  I think we are on top of it and these hits on our servers will stop soon. 

 

Best regards,

It sort of looked to me to exactly be a D.O.S. attack.  Seems it was/is....

What does that mean Jim?    that people or organisations are purposely attacking the website Avsim,  to what gain though?  To gather information or a financial gain of some sort 

Or are we just caught between something 

Jealousy for a smooth running, well maintained,  and most successful website, people who have been banned...people that have been repelled in the past...and whose egos were hurt in the undertaking.   Jerks...to all of the above...

I have only just managed to get into the site a couple of minutes ago. It's been a case of "503 - Service unavailable" ever since I got home from work. I hope this sorts itself out pretty soon, because it's starting to get annoying.

Chris,

 

I've been unable to get into the front page with the 503 error, but so far have had no issues if I go straight to the forums. I'm also UK ,

 

 

Cheers

 

 

Steve

I've been fine all day, but I suspect that's because my connection has been open the whole time, so possibly new connections are having a hard time getting through. This is what can happen under too much network traffic or open idle connections.

 

In relation to connections from Russia and China, well they can of course be legitimate, but also can be automated scans and attacks. Bots are constantly scanning IP's for open ports and explots, often automatically, and then just report back from whoever is running them. I have a server that has connection SSH connection attempts, and I'd have a guess a lot are automated. It's all part of being on the internet. It could be more traffic then normal so an attack as such, it would be difficult to imagine someone trying to do this for financial gain however, avsim is not a retailer nor takes payment. So some people trying to have some fun, as it where, is probably the most likely. That's if it is receiving a lot of connections. It could be the upstream provider under an attack of some sort, which has a knock on. I remember I had a few issues in the last job I was on because a customer of our ISP was under directed DOS attacks over a number of weeks and unfortunately had a knock affect for the whole network

Since 15:00 UK till a few minutes ago, I've been getting the 530 Error when trying to access www.avsim.com It was only after I contacted a friend and he suggested trying avsim.net that I managed to get on, a few seconds ago.

Both of those names hit the same IP, so that sounds like luck to me, more then anything else.

 

If anyone is interested, here is a live map of DOS attacks http://www.digitalattackmap.com

 

Things are pretty quiet right now

Since 15:00 UK till a few minutes ago, I've been getting the 530 Error when trying to access www.avsim.com It was only after I contacted a friend and he suggested trying avsim.net that I managed to get on, a few seconds ago.

I had the same problem as you Rick.  Just recently everything started working again.  We are looking for solutions but our IPB shows no issues.

 

Best regards,

Theres an Avsim.com? I don't think google has ever sent me there. Ever.

Theres an Avsim.com? I don't think google has ever sent me there. Ever.

Yes, AVSIM owns AVSIM.com as well as AVSIM.net so you cannot go out and set up your own AVSIM website.

 

Best regards,

...unless it is AVSIM.ru of course. :mad:

So this is interesting.  Blocked access from RU last night and the site is running like a rocket, even with 550 users online.  The slow downs the last few days were with 325 users online at a time.  Not sure if there's a correlation, but let's monitor!

 

In the meantime, thank you all for offering support in helping us identify these speed issues.  We are very much interested in fixing them with all the resources we have.

Still have issues going on.  When I log in and press the "submit" icon, it does nothing and will eventually time out as "no response from server" or "server too busy.  please try again later."  However, if I click "submit", wait ten secs or so and then click it again before it times out, then I get an error from AVSIM that "You do not have permission to do that." or "You do not have permission to access that."  HOWEVER, I am shown as logged in and the site works normally from there.  Neither faster nor slower than usual.  This particular problem has been going on all week.  My bookmark is http://forum.avsim.net/page/index.html.  If I do the same thing by going to Yahoo (I don't use anything from Google, in my business too much!) and looking up AVSIM and I'm not already logged in, it does this for every shortcut but the library. 

Kattz, try using http://forum.avsim.net/

 

index.html, I have no idea where that's going because we use .php... I think that's the HTML "presentation" for the PHP coding that runs the main page.

Chase, logged out, went to another non-AVSIM page, and used your link provided.  Worked great.  Thanks for the heads up. 

So this is interesting.  Blocked access from RU last night and the site is running like a rocket, even with 550 users online.

Well, more like an elderly C172 actually, but yes it is a bit faster...