Preventing Flooding

[retired_member6]

I've got a new site idea but because it's being developed on the cheap (doing it myself) I'm worried about security, now the idea is for the system to be abused to a certain extent but I'd like a way as back up to monitor ip usage and then put in place bans either that or the abilty to simply prevent flooding from an ip after a certain amount of hits, is that possible? is there a htaccess or control panel function perhaps?

It's difficult to say too much without revealing the idea before launch. If it gets abused I can always pay for some quick development but free is always good.

Cheers
Lee

 

[fred]

You can block IP's via CPanel:

1. Log into your Cpanel account.
2. Go to Ip Deny Manager.
3. Under "Add an IP Deny:" enter in the IP address you wish to block.
4. Click "Add".

I think this creates an htaccess file which does the blocking.

 

[A-Wing]

If you want an automated way of doing this you could use a flat file or DB to store IPs with timestamps, if you get X number of calls from the same IP in Y seconds echo some static content to the screen stating you are blocking for flooding reasons. The shouldn't cause any CPU load and hardly any network load (if you make say 1-2K of static content).
There are pitfalls however. You may need to make sure things like Google don't get blocked. Images are easy enough using PHP scripts to grab them so you can implement your blocking code.
Some big sites switch to auto-generated static versions of themselves upon heavy load spike which I think is a good idea for things like news sites.