question for admin/mods: wondering reason for increased forum website traffic?

[GNUser]

Hits from today by useragent   only the top 20

Hi Paul_123. How awful.

I'll just make the point that when most sites do that (or start using any other service that requires Javascript to try and verify humanity) I stop visiting.

It's not like server administrators have great options in this situation.

I have my own http server which I use just for myself, family, and few friends. The server was getting hammered with tens of thousands of visits an hour, every hour, every day. I don't have premium hardware, so sometimes I couldn't access my own http server

The options I considered were 1) shut off the server, 2) use a Javascript gatekeeper (e.g., Anubis), and 3) put the server on a nonstandard port. I actually tried all three options for a while. Doing without the server was too painful. Anubis worked well but added too much complexity to my otherwise barebones setup. Using a nonstandard port turned out to be the right balance for me.

Using a nonstandard port does not eliminate the problem (some bots are more sophisticated and do port scanning), but it eliminates >50% of bot traffic, bringing the noise down to a tolerable level. Would using a nonstandard port be worth trying for the TCL forum? The problem is that this would prevent a lot of legitimate, human users from finding the forum.

[Paul_123]

Based on the port scanning going on, I doubt it.  Might slow them down for a couple of days.   And would just frustrate users.

Yesterday's hit was the first botnet that I know of.  Otherwise the bots have been fairly respectful.