[Pixalo]

We have been off line for a little over an last hour due to a DDOS attack on the server. Our hosts have been very helpful and are working efficiently to restore the service to its usual high level. The site is still a little sluggish but should be back to full speed very soon.

Pixalo would like to apologise for the downtime that was caused by the act of people intent on causing disruption to online services.

[jewel]

Originally Posted by Pixalo

Pixalo would like to apologise for the downtime that was caused by the act of people intent on causing disruption to online services.

Well that doesn't sound good, people; what people? Are you saying what I think your saying?

Jewel

[Steve]

No Jewel

As far as we can tell this is totally innocent and unfortunately this site has been caught up in an attack on a different site which happens to be using the same server as us. Its very unfortunate that it has happened today and we believe that many memebers from the UK are still having access problems

[Steve]

The latest update on this is that all issues have been corrected and controlled by our hosts but many people are still unable to access this site. This is more than likely due to dns caching issues at users ISP’s and totally out of the control of Pixalo or our hosts.

More information…

When you access a website, your computer does a dns query and caches the result, so that it doesn’t have to do the query again and again (it makes website access faster). The same sort of caching is also done at ISP level - this helps if multiple computers access the same site..

Now in this particular DDOS attack case, user’s computers (or possibly ISP’s) were not able to access the DNS server for the attack duration - and they have cached it. So now even though the server is available, your computer or ISP just don't try to resolve the dns now, simply returning the negative result from the cache.

Eventually the dns cache will expire, and then all users will be able to access the site normally once their ISP’s have resolved the correct DNS again.

[Dave]

Well I'm back at last after sending note to BT re DNS cache. We can't apologise enough to our members for this disruption

[Joe T]

It was definitely slow/not working last night, but all ok now!

[Steve]

I am glad it is getting back to normal for more people now.

I had about 2 hours total downtime yesterday, with the site crawling sometimes and being speedy others. I know for certain that others have had it much worse though, people like Dave have been totally unable to access it for almost 24 hours which is not good for us or for you.

Again we can only apologise but this was caused by a malicious attack on a different site, hosted on the same server as us. Funny enough it was a football site and the timing was planned perfectly for the beginning of the world cup.

There was not a great deal we could have done to prevent it but hopefully it will be an isolated incident.

[Fangman]

Off last night in UK and still slow but usable this evening - Thanks for all the time you spend sorting it out on our behalf - I would not know where to start!

[Dave]

Thanks for the kind words Fangman, but all credit goes to Steve for raising & tracking the problem & dealing with me nagging him constantly back in the UK
At least it gave me time to take some shots with my new lens.