Down Time

[sharon sanders]

FluTrackers has been experiencing some odd down time recently.

Some times we will go down for 20 minutes. Once in a while it might be for an hour. Usually this is occurring abound dinner time on the east coast of the United States.

The server company is reporting that, according to their information, we have not been down.

We are now investigating Denial of Service Attacks. This is a serious situation. If this is occurring, we will cooperate with the authorities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack

[DRJJ]

Re: Down Time

This has happened fairly frequently to me, the last time being at about 6 PM Pacific Daylight Savings time this evening and lasting for at least an hour.

I would guesstimate that you have been down to me at least a dozen times since January.

[Theresa42]

Re: Down Time

Yes -- I experienced some down time yesterday -- it was around 4:30 a.m. ET. I was logged on and about to post something and suddenly FTs was gone. Don't know how long it lasted 'cause I just quit computing for a few hours.

[JJackson]

Re: Down Time

I have also noticed connection lost for a while from time to time. It is not related to problems on other sites. Thought it was DNS related as no one else mentioned them.

[HenryN]

Re: Down Time

I could not access the site last night between 9:30-10:00 PM EDT (but did not try later). I could get to the front page, but when I tried accessing a linked post, or get the most recent posts, nothing happened, other than an hour glass appearing).

[Blue]

Re: Down Time

I noticed this several times the past week also. I could not connect to the site. I could connect to other flu forums, just not flutrackers.

[sharon sanders]

Re: Down Time

I just opened this email from the server company about last night's outage:

"Hello,

I have checked the domain flutrackers.com and it resolved fine. Your forum is working fine........"

The rest of the note explains the next steps that are being taken.

Why would someone(s) deliberately sabotage the linkage to FT?

1) We have taken controversial positions. Both the liberal and conservative political ideologues are not pleased with us.
2) We provide safe harbor for several controversial, leading-edge scientists.
3) While we respect the governments, we do not "bow" to them.
4) While we respect all industries and commerce, we do not "bow" to them either.
4) Competition among the various "bird flu" forums.


All of the above is being reviewed now. I will keep everyone updated. We are committed to provide consistent and reliable online service.

Thank you for participating in the largest participatory online Public Health Charity in the world.

[ruthbeme]

Re: Down Time

I tried last night and could not get on line between 9:45 - 10:25 pm EDT did not continue to try afterwards.

[FluBossie]

Re: Down Time

I was on FluTrackers last knight between about 24.00 and 03.30 a.m. today in Dutch time, and at ones I couldn't refresh (F5) anymore. At the same time the connecting with other sites like Google News was working well. This happened to me several times.

[wetDirt]

Re: Down Time

I've noticed this too, but I don't think it's anything sinister. This kind of thing happens when a router goes out. That's why the service will say there is nothing wrong with their end. The problem sometimes is a bottleneck at the first main distribution hub. My guess is that it's an outage at one of the big router farms in Jersey.

[sharon sanders]

Re: Down Time

The server is located in California. Members from all over the world report problems.

[gsgs]

Re: Down Time

Why would someone(s) deliberately sabotage the linkage to FT?

1) We have taken controversial positions. Both the liberal and conservative political ideologues are not pleased with us.
2) We provide safe harbor for several controversial, leading-edge scientists.
3) While we respect the governments, we do not "bow" to them.
4) While we respect all industries and commerce, we do not "bow" to them either.
4) Competition among the various "bird flu" forums.

what might be their motivation ? could this work ?
all "they" can achieve, that FT goes to another server.

Is it just "revenge" for unfavourite posts ? Then "they" might
want to give us a hint, who they are and which posts are targeted...


1) we avoid controversial positions (no bashing)
2) no safe harbour. Everyone is at increased risk of banning (suspending)
3) politics avoided
4) no commercials
4) other forums should report similar problems


you could maybe make a mirror page, I don't know how much effort,
cost it would be.


could it be caused by someone downloading FT-pages automatically
in bulk ? I once tried it, but only a few hundred pages, only a few minutes.
I did it with fluwiki but I told them and they agreed.
You could use that for archiving or to "rebuild" FT on another server.
Or for merging it with other forums and open a merged forum
on another server.
Let's merge the bird-flu forums !

[sharon sanders]

Re: Down Time

The problem is being handled.

We will not be intimidated into submission.

We will stand for truth in mass communication.

We will continue to present all sides of an issue.

We will present ideas that are controversial.

We will demand respect and dignity for all persons, in every culture, in every country, of both sexes, and of all races.

[JJackson]

Re: Down Time

Why does anyone think it could be a DoS attack? The hosting servers firewall and traffic monitoring software should have no problem seeing a DoS attack, the problem is working out who initiated it. Attacks take considerable coordination and are 'best' arranged by virus infection of innocent PCs which then swamp the target at a signal or pre-arranged time (hence no obvious perpetrator). FluTrackers does not fit the profile; F1's list notwithstanding we are not that controversial. I suspect we are the least offensive Flu site.

[HenryN]

Re: Down Time

Why does anyone think it could be a DoS attack? The hosting servers firewall and traffic monitoring software should have no problem seeing a DoS attack, the problem is working out who initiated it. Attacks take considerable coordination and are 'best' arranged by virus infection of innocent PCs which then swamp the target at a signal or pre-arranged time (hence no obvious perpetrator). FluTrackers does not fit the profile; F1's list notwithstanding we are not that controversial. I suspect we are the least offensive Flu site.

I agree. I think this is a server issue. I could access the site, but not the links on the site. The server sees that users are accessing the site, and assume all is well.