Spiders/crawlers and search engine bots routinely access this forum and virtually all other web pages which have any kind of activity. This is simply a fact of (internet) life.

Lately, we have been inundated by these crawlers, at one point showing over 10,000 "guests" on the forum. Almost all of these (with the exception of Microsoft stateside) are from Asia: China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore, etc. Ali Baba, Temu and so forth.

The result has been that they are sucking up our bandwidth and we have, as of yesterday, only halfway through the month, used up our entire allotted bandwidth per our host's data plan. Normally, we might exceed that allotment one or two days before the end of the month, and this isn't a concern. Actually, it indicates we have the correct plan for our usage.

Restricting general access to the site, so that you must be logged into the forum, eliminates the problem, so, for the remainder of the month, I will be toggling guest access off and on as the need arises. I'll be speaking with our host on the best ways to get this under control. Blocking IP segments helps, but for reasons I'll not go into, it's not practical.

Just so you guys know. And for those of you who are regular readers of the forum but have never registered, now would be a good time to do so. When you register, do not use a VPN, as I have to be able to determine your actual/approximate location to see that it coincides with the location you specified in your profile. After registration and you're approved, you can go back to using a VPN if you wish, although there's really no need to do such a thing here.

I was wondering. Thanks for the heads-up.

I had a feeling it was something like that. Why not just leave it as requiring log-in on a permanent basis?

I'm not going to do that

New guy here. Long time reader. Glad to be registered, but sorry it comes about as a pain for you and the legit members here.

Thank you. Just housekeeping. I'll get it worked out.

Your work is very much appreciated Parabellum. If anyone knows how to set up a way to donate, I'd be more than happy to contribute.

Thanks very much, but we're OK for now.

Some of us simply never log out...Why do it any other way

quote:

Originally posted by nhracecraft:
Some of us simply never log out...Why do it any other way

Guilty.

Same ^^^^^^^^

Me too!

Is signing up for a content-delivery network plan (e.g. Akamai) or anti-DDoS service (e.g. CloudFlare) at all helpful to mitigate the load by geo-region? Throttle bandwidth outside the US vs. IP schema blocks.

Potentially other helpful strategy is using Quad9 for server DNS. It's a free service through Global Cyber Alliance that automatically blocks/filters known bad actors and IP ranges (it's legit....my buddy was the guy behind getting it created in the first place and he lives three miles away from me and is one of the good guys; Mark Bowden of Blackhawk Down fame wrote a book about him and his cybersecurity activism).

Thanks for the suggestions, PGT

Like they say in the Army, "tanks alot" -- for keeping us safer.

If it makes your job easier, I'm for doing it from now on.

Not an issue for me. Glad to oblige.
Since I’m not a computer guy I have a question?
Do all the responses to comments which quote someone’s comment first eat up bandwidth? I think you have addressed people doing that before when some threads turn into a rolling ball of nested quotes….

Thanks, Para.
This forum is my therapy from the bull**** in my life. Nothing beats sitting down with a cup of coffee and relaxing with good people.
You make that happen. Again,
Thank you for keeping the forum running for us.

quote:

Originally posted by BOATTRASH1:
Do all the responses to comments which quote someone’s comment first eat up bandwidth? I think you have addressed people doing that before when some threads turn into a rolling ball of nested quotes….

No, you needn't be concerned about that at all.

The issue with nested quotes is not one of data usage, but rather one of needlessly taking up space on the page, which members have to scroll through. This is also the reason you may notice that I remove images from quoted content, since the original post contains the image, and re-posting the identical image needlessly takes up space on the page.

I wouldn't have noticed. Every week, CCleaner clears out stuff that make me log back in to Sigforum.

But thank you for letting us know. Full month's limit at the half-way point is quite a draw.