Slow Login

[barnee]

pretty slow the last couple days. Have been needing to login multiple times too

:(

[Elrood]

@Panther yes, server seems to be stressed now and then. last two days (29th and 30th of Nov.) it got really bad. Forum was not accessible several times I tried…

[Panther]

@Elrood

That is what I experience, too.

[djensen]

I’ve rebooted the server. Hopefully that resolves the problems.

[djensen]

It turns out that Chinese bots are hammering the site. I’ll sign up for Cloudflare this weekend and hopefully that helps reduce the load on the site by blocking the bots.

[Elrood]

@djensen omg!
I remember when I had my NAS at home configured to be accessible from the outside, that I got now and then a brute force attack from somewhere in asia (Russia or China mainly), lead to an IP ban ofc, but it was scary… and my server was nothing promoted on the web… unlike your Forum… :-(

Good luck!

[barnee]

@djensen

kinda thought it was bots.

I donated my annual 15 bucks today fwiw. hope it helps :)

[djensen]

@Elrood Thanks. It might be another $25/month in operating costs.

I think I’ll have to up the subscriptions or add a new tier. If Board Game Nation can charge $5-$25/month; I can probably do the same? I’d prefer the yearly thing though.

[barnee]

Really bad today. Worst it’s been actually. 12-8-25

Site basically unusable

[Elrood]

@barnee Chinese bots having a field day with A&A.org it seems. :-°(

[CentralCommando]

@djensen I wonder why Chinese bots are so interested in this site? I haven’t experienced any issues today thankfully…

[Elrood]

@CentralCommando I suspect Chinese hackers seeing what we play and what unimportant role China plays in A&A… and they are like „wtf? Just you wait and see what the great China is capable of!“

I imagine it a bit like this: (Seinfeld - Kramer) https://youtu.be/fzLtF_PxbYw?si=0QU6y-RCUB8fOsf3

„China is joke to you?!“

;-)

[CentralCommando]

@Elrood Not only that, it’s always the Kuomintang instead of the CCP. The CCP has never been in Axis & Allies before, and while there are good reasons for this, Chinese Bots consider this unforgivable.

;)

[Elrood]

@CentralCommando but coming to think of it… I could imagine some bot browsing for buzz words and then starting the attack automatically… like „China war casualties“ etc… China takes great effort to clean up its history like tiananmen etc.
might be a bit far fetched but technologywise it is plausible.

[CentralCommando]

@Elrood Very true, I wouldn’t put it past Winnie’s China to raid sites to keep certain events out of their narrative, even if the method is extremely flawed and invasive.

[Elrood]

@CentralCommando and now you added Poo to the buzz words! Will only be downhill from here!!! 😅😅

[CentralCommando]

@Elrood Oh nooooooooooooooooo!
These bots are going to have a field day! :((((((

[djensen]

It kinda feels like the site is faster today right?

I enabled Cloudflare so I think it’s working. Sorry Chinese AI bots, you don’t get to have A&A in your language models.

However, I think there are some issues with over-aggressive caching. Working on it.

[djensen]

I was seeing the yellow box in the lower right corner warning that “it looks like you’re not connected” or something like that.

I restarted a few things and it went away for me. I’m hoping that you all are also not seeing that error but if you are. Please let me know.

Also; the site really does seem faster, right?

[djensen]

Okay, this time for real. We’re running through Cloudflare now. Sticky sessions enabled so that your websocket sessions don’t switch servers and get all confused.