Intermittent performance issues

[denise]

Some people have noticed intermittent performance issues and errors on and off today: this is happening because of bursts of traffic (much of it automated or illegitimate) that can temporarily overwhelm our automatic performance scaling system when it can't keep up with adding extra resources quickly enough or when it reaches the limit of additional servers it's allowed to add. (That limit exists so a flood of garbage traffic can't make the autoscaling system spend too much money trying to accomodate the garbage.) The garbage doesn't appear to be a specific targeted DDoS attempt, just part of the general overall increase in garbage traffic internet-wide. We're doing what we can to filter it, and when performance issues happen, the site will generally recover within 5-10 minutes as our defenses kick in. I apologize for the hassle!

Comments

[claudeb]

And people complain when the dead internet theory is brought up. :P No worries, do what you can.

[winterizer]

My first thought as well! It's really shitty that most internet traffic comes from bots nowadays. The internet's flooded with them. :P

[muccamukk]

Oh jeez. I was wondering what that was. Thanks for keeping as much of the garbage traffic out as you can.

[rotbar]

Благодарствую за предупреждение: перебедуем.

[weofodthignen]

Thanks for letting us know, and for handling it.

[prisca]

Thank you for letting us know. And for all the great work you do.

[lokifan]

Seconded!

[pangolin20]

Thank you for telling us and doing your best to fix it.

[loganberrybunny]

Thank you for the heads-up and for your hard work!

Also, thank you for the way you keep people informed in clear language. That's way rarer than it should be online, and it is a major plus point for DW. :)

[kore]

Also, thank you for the way you keep people informed in clear language. That's way rarer than it should be online, and it is a major plus point for DW. :)

That really is so rare these days!

[cmcmck]

Ah, that explains my slight issues last night!

Thanks! :o)

[kitarella_imagines]

Thanks for the info and thanks for keeping the garbage out 😊 I think AI is increasing the garbage on the internet 😞

[moonhare]

Thanks for the heads-up, and yes, your ongoing, superlative upkeep here!

[paserbyp]

"just part of the general overall increase in garbage traffic internet-wide"

Maybe related to something going on Russia and Ukraine?

[selki]

There's been an uptick of junk posts/submissions all over (e.g., SF magazines being overwhelmed). I think a lot of it is due to AI spambots. Sadly, I don't see an end in sight. So I think all sites need to put in some kind of limit like DW did. Argh.

[badly_knitted]

Ah, I wondered what was going on yesterday. Thanks you for all your hard work!

[profiterole_reads]

Thanks for the update. It did look like a traffic issue, so I just waited a little.

[sine_nomine]

Grateful, as always, for the clear updates, for everyone's efforts, and for this space.

[senmut]

Best website

[veritas_poet]

As always, thanks for the heads up. I always worry that it's a problem on my end of things.

[lisaow82]

I just thought it was my crappy phone 😂

[lb_lee]

Lol same

[ride_4ever]

Thank you kindly for the update. DW is the best!

[starandrea]

Thank you!!! ♥♥♥

[susanreads]

Ah, so that's where the number errors came from yesterday! (503? 404? something like that)
Thanks for being on top of it. Now I know to wait a few minutes and try again.

[kore]

Thank you for letting us know and always being so transparent about DW issues!

Appreciation

[degringolade]

Thanks for taking such good care of this nice little side-lane of the internet.

[princessjune]

Thank you so much for all of the hard work.

Dreamwidth is a beautiful site. 💗

[madfilkentist]

It's been really problematic the last couple of days. I've been hit by multiple 403 refusals, some of them when I was logged in. Earlier I couldn't leave a comment on this post. I just successfully commented on someone else's post, so we'll see if it works this time.

[denise]

There are a few different things that can cause the issues and a few different errors that happen, yeah. (And it doesn't depend on whether you're logged in or not!)

[weird]

Thanks for taking out the trash DW!