We're Back!

[Rogean]

I apologize for the extended downtime caused by a troubled individual who felt his goal in life is to bring down volunteer projects by attacking the server with distributed denial of service attacks. We have since moved the server to a new location and operations will begin to resume as normal.

The monthly cost of our hosting went up substantially. I thank everyone who contributed while we were down, those donations helped a lot and will cover the cost of the server for a while. If you haven't donated yet, please consider doing so.

I want to also give a big thank you to Iggi. He was particularly helpful in assisting me with picking the server up from its old location, and getting it set up and shipped out to it's new location. Thanks Iggi!

If you are having problems connecting to the loginserver, you can try setting your eqhost to 64.120.211.247.

[KingMort]

Please tell me steps have been taken so this will not happen again ?

Or is that impossible..

[Rogean]

Impossible to prevent the ddos, but the new host will be less likely to terminate our servers over the issue, making his reasons for targetting the loginserver seem pointless.

[iggi]

You can try to mitigate some effects of a DDoS, like the use of CPU when responding to TCP packets (because the CPU tries to respond to every packet coming in) However, this was a UDP based attack which makes it difficult to determine which packets are good and which are not. Really, a true DDoS is nearly impossible to block completely, just have to have a big enough pipe and CPU to handle the packets or distribute the load (preferably geographically as well).

[trevius]

If the hosting has CoPP (Control Plane Policing) in use on their Cisco Routers (assuming they use Cisco), it can help with router and network stability during an attack. Really, the attack needs to be stopped before it reaches the server so that it isn't causing too bad of issues for the host service to make them want to drop you. I am sure there are other ways to help mitigate attacks, but DDoS attacks are definitely among the hardest to fight due to their nature.

Personally, I think the best defense for an attack is to reduce anything that might provoke an attack as much as possible. As far as I know, P1999 was the original target of the attack, and being that it was hosted on the same service/box as the LS and Website, it made P1999 and the LS/Website both potential targets. I am not saying that P1999 should be run on a completely separate box/hosting service from the LS/Website, but I have to wonder if the LS/Website issue would have occurred at all if P1999 was hosted elsewhere. If the new hosting service is that much better that this is no longer a concern, then there should be no more issues with it. Just something to consider, though.

BTW, many thanks to Rogean and anyone else who helped to get everything back up and running again. The LS itself was only down for a short period after the hosting was canceled and that is the most important part of this project. And, considering that the server had to be relocated and dealing with finding new hosting and getting everything running on it, it was restored fairly quickly as well. So, good job on all of that.

[jakalecax]

Welcome back!

[Rogean]

Trevius, He was targetting the loginserver. P99 was moved to a different data center several weeks before he decided to attack it, and I saw the bandwidth hitting the loginserver when it happened.

[brokerboo]

Just Wanted to say thanks for all your hard work

[eski2]

I'm having problems connecting and staying connected. I've tried altering the eqhost file to use the IP instead just in case but to no avail. Is there any way I can check whether the problem is somehow my ISP (everything else seems fine and my download/uploads are uninterrupted at the time) or something to do with eqemu or another attack?

Does anyone else get similar problems?

I don't see packet loss in the client and I'm not sure what else could cause the issue.

[trevius]

The Login Server has nothing to do with staying connected to a server. It is only related to the part where you log in and select a server from the list. After that point, it is up to the server itself that you are connecting to, and your own internet connection/PC to do the rest. Maybe the server you are trying to play on is just having bandwidth or resource issues, or maybe there is an issue on your end. Have you tried playing on other servers to see if the problem happens on all servers, or just the one? If it is only happening on 1 server, then the problem is with that server. If it happens on all servers you try, then the problem is probably with your connection.

Either way, if your problem continues, it is best for you to make a new thread in the general support section, as it isn't related to the topic of this thread in any way.

[eski2]

thanks for that! It's given me the direction to attack this problem.