Slow forum access times....anyone but me?

[Wiz57]

Hey Mike!
It's sort of late morning here, haven't noticed as much sluggishness yet today, but over the past 3 or 4 days I have observed longer
response times when I open a topic link in a new tab, as you mentioned across browsers, OSes, etc. At first I thought it might be
my connection via WiFi hotspot on phone, but then I'd load an unrelated website in a new tab as a test, and the page would load
just fine. Come back to the problem forum link, sometimes stopping the loading then reload seemed to go a bit quicker. Hard to
pin down as it just seemed very random. I usually try to open newer posts in a new tab, maybe 6 or 10 tabs, in Edge on Win11 or
Palemoon/chromium on S15Pup32, and there would be 1 or 2 that just seemed to be waiting on response, others loaded.
Wiz

[rockedge]

Thanks for the info @mikewalsh!! So far I am not seeing the slow down.........yet....

[keniv]

Was slow here this morning but it's a bit odd in that when I tried to open it was so slow I gave up and tried another forum (in the UK) which opened immediately. I read this then tried here again and it opened normally. Opened normally when I tried again just now. Hope this helps.

Regards,

Ken.

[mikewalsh]

@rockedge / all:-

Huh. Oh, it seems very hit'n'miss. ATM - around 4 PM here in the UK - everything's now loading fine; just as you'd expect, really. I just thought I'd better mention it, though I know from experience that sometimes, occasional 'jam-ups' occur when you get several people trying to post at exactly the same time.

We'll keep an eye on it. That's all we CAN do, TBH....

Over & out!

Mike.

[bigpup]

Rockedge stopped pedaling for a while.
The forum had no power
.

xdc_9uth6tbOS4Sh_FrDL8xtLHQrACdyNNBW5Gbu8T0.webp (111.13 KiB) Viewed 2989 times

[sonny]

@rockedge

Data scraping slows down servers

datascrapper.jpg (68.22 KiB) Viewed 2894 times

The Claude* Team Sparks Outrage Over Data Scraping Issues,
Resorting to Unethical Means to Bypass Rules

https://www.aibase.com/news/10739

Forums outage caused by Claude* AI

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=418609

*I'm one of Claude's hardcore subscribers

[fredx181]

Rockedge stopped pedaling for a while.
The forum had no power
...

Yeah, keep pedaling, also to stay in good shape !

[sonny]

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman (also the man behind Pi.ai):

"The social contract for content that is on the open web
is that it's "freeware" for training AI models."

https://petapixel.com/2024/07/02/the-he ... -fair-use/

[rockedge]

I use a sophisticated Firewall that blocks a lot of AI scrappers from probing the forum because they slow it down to unusable speeds. Just sending them away at the web server level so we can read and post in peace.

[mikewalsh]

@rockedge :-

It's getting noticeably slower over the last couple of days for me, here in the UK, Erik.....though still responds as it should at odd times. 25-30 seconds is the order of the day ATM.....

Damn bots are getting busy again!

Mike.

[rockedge]

@mikewalsh I noticed some periods of slowness as well. I went through and checked but operations are nominal and all systems appear to be running in the _green_.

Screenshot(27).jpg (56.53 KiB) Viewed 2789 times

Screenshot(28).jpg (57.77 KiB) Viewed 2789 times

[d-pupp]

Is it just me or is the forum slower again? Sometimes I even get a error message bad gateway.

[rockedge]

I am seeing the same thing. Some times gets better, but mostly a tick slower than it should be.

The server is running as expected and no major loads. Will investigate the Firewall.

Screenshot(19).jpg (65.59 KiB) Viewed 2285 times

[keniv]

Yeah I've noticed this again here in the UK. I seems to vary though I'm not sure there's any real pattern.

Ken

[mikewalsh]

@rockedge :-

I've noticed something else this last 2-3 weeks, Erik. On a couple of occasions, I've written replies to people, then hit the 'Submit' button to post them. Instead of going to the forum with the post showing, I get the editor window back again......except my post's vanished!

Never seen this before.....and this is the only forum it happens on. On both occasions it had already taken ages to go to the next page, then a couple of odd flickers, a blank editor window and no post. Perhaps a bug in this particular release of the phpBB software?

Mike.

[mikewalsh]

.....and here we go AGAIN.

Wednesday, 19th February 2025. Time, 3.30pm-ish (mid-afternoon).

Every page is taking north of 30 seconds + to load. In addition, I'm frequently getting a page telling me too many user requests have been made in too short a space of time (error code; 429, I believe).

I have to assume the AI scraper bots are out in full force today.....

Mike.

[rockedge]

Yes I am seeing the same thing and I have been on the server checking things out, but all looks to be in order. There is one IP that is hammering at the door which may be an AI scraper Bot. But

Right now it has gotten better. I will also keep monitoring the situation. Worrisome when we see the page or search request limits exceeded warnings

[TerryH]

Seems OK for me now also.

[mikewalsh]

@rockedge :-

Huh. Within the space of 5 minutes, everything is now back to normal. Thought I'd best let ya know, even so....

I suspect this is going to be a fact of life for the forseeable future!

EDIT:- Hmm... Useful Wikipedia page here, containing a full listing of all HTTP(S) "status codes". Very informative. I think I'm going to bookmark this one:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes

I did read somewhere the other day that the worrying thing about AI bots is that they simply don't know when to stop...

(*shrug...*)

Mike.

[rockedge]

The Bot AI scrapers definitely do not know when to stop.

I found that a certain IP was the culprit but fortunately I already had this IP, which constantly sends page requests using different ports, blocked by a Firewall on the server. We have seen the IP before doing the same actions so I had added the IP to the instant denial and ban list the firewall has configured a few months ago. Still slows down the server overall because of the intensity the Bot operates with. Literally flooding the server with page requests on the forum. Does a lot of probing with no avail. We have a pretty decent defense in depth strategy. But these AI scrapers send so many requests repeatedly that the different layers of firewalls get engaged and the system begins to slow down as we try to get our single page request processed.

[TerryH]

Seems to have slowed again for me, over 30 seconds for reply window to come up.

[bigpup]

Notice this new bot accessing the forum.

Google Feedfetcher
https://developers.google.com/search/do ... eedfetcher

[N97]

I found this amusing...
Located at bigpup's link.

feedfetcher.jpg (167.53 KiB) Viewed 1209 times

[tammi806]

That's what I got earlier all seems to be working now without complaints.

[tammi806]

Rockedge stopped pedaling for a while.

xdc_9uth6tbOS4Sh_FrDL8xtLHQrACdyNNBW5Gbu8T0.webp (111.13 KiB) Viewed 1140 times

Come on at least show a bicycle with a generator on it for realism.

[mikewalsh]

Seems to be up & down like a yo-yo today. I'm back to 30-second access times again.... (*yawn....*)

Frustrating!!

Mike.

[bugnaw333]

Same here today. almost 30 seconds.

[Wiz57]

I'm noticing it now...looking at Who Is Online, then displaying Guests, shows a large number from very similar IP Addresses...
Suspect some sort of DDoS may be underway. Whois shows registration in Netherlands, Ripe LLC.

[bugnaw333]

This afternoon, still too slow and got this error and I could not attached an image file.

Too many requests
The user has sent to many requests in a given amount of time.

[keniv]

I noticed this slowing again yesterday evening here in the UK but it seem to be OK again this morning. I think the yoyo description is quite a good one.

Ken.