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Multiple users are unable to view the site

Rubik

King of Lorule Lounge
Joined
Jan 19, 2018
Location
California
Gender
Horsehead
I was having issues accessing ZD a few times over the weekend myself too but it seems to be back to normal for me now.

The issue has been raised in the staff chat and I am awaiting further information from @Mases regarding whether or not specific IPs are being impacted site wide.

If you are having sustained issues (i.e. the site or forums isn't loading for you at all at any time) please PM Mases and myself together with your IPv4 and IPv6 address (you can find that here https://whatismyipaddress.com/) of the network where you are seeing the issues so that it can be troubleshooted. Please let those who can't access the site at all know that they can send this information to me on Discord alternatively.
My biggest concern is what happens to the people who might have been shut out who don't have a way to contact people on the site or might just assume it's been shut down or that they've been banned.

If the reason we can't get on the site is because the IP ban list wrongfully added a bunch of us, then it might be better to save a copy of the list just in case, remove all ip bans aside from any sort of standard blacklisted ips you might have, and then manually re-IP ban the IPs of any users you think need to remain IP banned. I don't think asking members to manually provide their IPs is a very clean answer and I would be surprised if the admin console didn't have a way to look up our IP addresses in XenForo.
 

Dizzi

magical internet cat....
ZD Legend
Joined
Jun 22, 2016
Maybe you could put a thing at the top of the page explaining theres problems.... fir tge quiet times...
 

Princess Niki

Allons-y
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Aug 27, 2011
Location
Alola
The main problem with contacting people is a lack of access to discord. There are people that only use their phone for internet and if it's an older model they are making things harder so that they will eventually buy a new phone when they shouldn't have to. So when their phone "updates" they brick it instead because screw consumers.
 

Dizzi

magical internet cat....
ZD Legend
Joined
Jun 22, 2016
I had that full phone problem but someone showed me a trick and cleared a load of space....
 
Regardless of the cause, I feel this (as in submitting your IP to be individually whitelisted) is a pretty pointless and inconvenient solution to the problem. Not everyone is gonna want to DM a webmaster about access issues; it's so much easier to close the page and go to a different site. New users will be less inclined to stay, especially.

I question the whole blacklist explanation as well, because my IP hasn't changed between the times I can and cannot access the site. Are you certain no one has tampered with the discouragement system?
 
Regardless of the cause, I feel this (as in submitting your IP to be individually whitelisted) is a pretty pointless and inconvenient solution to the problem. Not everyone is gonna want to DM a webmaster about access issues; it's so much easier to close the page and go to a different site. New users will be less inclined to stay, especially.

I question the whole blacklist explanation as well, because my IP hasn't changed between the times I can and cannot access the site. Are you certain no one has tampered with the discouragement system?

I don't understand why people think it's an IP issue. ZD did this last year and that didn't seem to be the cause, it is also affecting the majority, if not everybody and only for certain periods of time at specific times of day. Usually 12-13:00 GMT.

That doesn't sound to me like ZD is randomly going all Skynet and blocking IPs for a few hours a day. The site slows considerably before it finally gives in too.

I hope someone can figure out whatever it is though, since people for some reason seem to be only making an issue of this now when the same thing happened last year until it stopped.
 

Rubik

King of Lorule Lounge
Joined
Jan 19, 2018
Location
California
Gender
Horsehead
From my understanding, there's two different groups of problems: 1. total outage for (afaik) everyone for brief windows of time, and 2. users who haven't been able to access the website at all from a specific IP for the past few days.

Those of you who experienced an outage this morning would fall under group 1, whereas I, in group 2, can only access the website right now because I'm at work and my work wifi and data work while my home network does not.

It's possible the two problems are related, but issue 2 could very well be a blacklisting problem and it's possible issue 1 triggered issue 2 in some way, or both were caused by the same thing.
 

Jimmu

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
I still don't have a great deal of information as to the root of the ongoing issue but it is my understanding that some users have seen success in regaining access to the site after I sent Mases their IP addresses. Am still sending them through as they come since at this stage there isn't anything else I can do unfortunately.

My biggest concern is what happens to the people who might have been shut out who don't have a way to contact people on the site or might just assume it's been shut down or that they've been banned.

If the reason we can't get on the site is because the IP ban list wrongfully added a bunch of us, then it might be better to save a copy of the list just in case, remove all ip bans aside from any sort of standard blacklisted ips you might have, and then manually re-IP ban the IPs of any users you think need to remain IP banned. I don't think asking members to manually provide their IPs is a very clean answer and I would be surprised if the admin console didn't have a way to look up our IP addresses in XenForo.

I share the same concerns. Unfortunately I don't believe I have the access to this list as it goes above the forums. Am awaiting more from Mases on that point.

Maybe you could put a thing at the top of the page explaining theres problems.... fir tge quiet times...

I'll look into this in the next few days if things continue as is as it could be a good way to let people know.

The main problem with contacting people is a lack of access to discord. There are people that only use their phone for internet and if it's an older model they are making things harder so that they will eventually buy a new phone when they shouldn't have to. So when their phone "updates" they brick it instead because screw consumers.

I agree. Unfortunately at this stage there is not much more I am able to do until I hear more back from Mases. I know some work has been done but I don't think the entire issue has been resolved yet.

If someone tells you they are having access issues please pass it on to me.

Regardless of the cause, I feel this (as in submitting your IP to be individually whitelisted) is a pretty pointless and inconvenient solution to the problem. Not everyone is gonna want to DM a webmaster about access issues; it's so much easier to close the page and go to a different site. New users will be less inclined to stay, especially.

I question the whole blacklist explanation as well, because my IP hasn't changed between the times I can and cannot access the site. Are you certain no one has tampered with the discouragement system?

I have checked the discouragement system and there are no users or IPs being discouraged at all.

I don't understand why people think it's an IP issue. ZD did this last year and that didn't seem to be the cause, it is also affecting the majority, if not everybody and only for certain periods of time at specific times of day. Usually 12-13:00 GMT.

That doesn't sound to me like ZD is randomly going all Skynet and blocking IPs for a few hours a day. The site slows considerably before it finally gives in too.

I hope someone can figure out whatever it is though, since people for some reason seem to be only making an issue of this now when the same thing happened last year until it stopped.

For some users it seems to not just be a few hours a day but actually total inability to access ZD at anytime on their network. I think this is likely a separate issue to the slow loading of the site at certain periods of the day. For people totally unable to access the IP seems to be a likely problem.

From my understanding, there's two different groups of problems: 1. total outage for (afaik) everyone for brief windows of time, and 2. users who haven't been able to access the website at all from a specific IP for the past few days.

Those of you who experienced an outage this morning would fall under group 1, whereas I, in group 2, can only access the website right now because I'm at work and my work wifi and data work while my home network does not.

It's possible the two problems are related, but issue 2 could very well be a blacklisting problem and it's possible issue 1 triggered issue 2 in some way, or both were caused by the same thing.

Yeah, this seems to be right to me. I think progress has been made on issue 1 but am not entirely sure if the cause of issue 2 has yet been identified. I'll update if I hear back from Mases.
 

Jimmu

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
I can't post in the SB. It keeps saying I have to wait at least one second. Is that just me or the site?

No error logs seem to have been triggered in the last day from the shoutbox. Is this still an issue now?



As for the loading of the site it seems that everyone who has had issues are able to access the site again at this stage. If I am mistaken please do let me know. It is my understanding that everyone who came to me with their IP address have now had their issue resolved.

The memory capacity of the site is being doubled from 32gb and 64gb to respond to the fact that we have been regularly reaching capacity. Hopefully this should assist with the issue of the site being hard to access at certain times of the day.
 

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