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My client are a small business and they recently got flooded by DDOS attack. The website is a ecommerce app and the company sells audio equipment. Who would have thought? But turned out the competition did not like them...

Anyways we were intially hosted with hostmonster on a shared virtual apache server. Upon attack hostmonster literally 'freaked out' and kicked us out. So we found inmotion hosting. They were far far more helpful and we took up dedicated hosting with them. But their machine too balked under the attack.

Now (in case this happens again in future)

  1. We are looking for a hosting company that is knowledegeable about DDOS attacks and not freak out when it sees one.
  2. Offers protection from such attacks and probably has router level filtering of bad packets.

Looking around it seems most companies charge a fortune for this. Frankly my client cant afford $1500 per month. Does anyone know of any good hosting providers that could help us? Alternatively, could we install stuff on our existing dedicated server to mitigate such attacks?

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  • This is a good question. Online extortion and the like needs to end. Have you taken any efforts to find the source of the attacks?
    – Matt Simmons
    Dec 1, 2009 at 20:20
  • We could not pin point who was responsible. It was a distributed attack. The IPs were from all over the world. Some computers from Qatar Telcom and others from a Mexican Telcom company were involved (apparently compromised machines acting as zombies). It went on for about 7-8 whole days which is bad for a company that depends mostly on online sales.
    – user27780
    Dec 1, 2009 at 21:32
  • What kind of attack was this (e.g. which services was it directed at, how did it affect you/customers in practice, etc.)?
    – SimonJ
    Dec 1, 2009 at 22:09

2 Answers 2

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I work for Rackspace Hosting, and we provide DDoS protection with PrevenTier. It's quite effective from everything I've seen.

I know it sounds like an advertisement, but I was a customer before I was an employee. The reason I applied is largely because of the great service I received as a customer. You'd have to talk to the sales people re: costs of course, but a single dedicated box is fine for our Managed segment.

Here's an article on PrevenTier as used by Rackspace. In addition to the PrevenTier system (which is an add-on), every customer is assigned to a dedicated support team, who can assist with DDoS issues.

We were actually the first hosting company to provide an integrated anti-DDoS solution: linky.

This probably comes off way too much like an ad=P That's not my intention, but I just happen to work for a company providing what I think is a great DDoS solution.

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  • Love the drive-by downvote with no comment. I can't have legitimate knowledge about something because I actually work on it? Fail.
    – phoebus
    Dec 1, 2009 at 22:00
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    With 677 rep I don't think anyone can accuse you of pulling shameless ads. Plus I'm in the same boat - I was a customer, and then I went to work for the people who's product I used. It means that you understand the product better than the people who have only ever worked there!
    – Mark Henderson
    Dec 1, 2009 at 22:26
  • P.S. I wouldn't be surprised if the -vote was just some tactical voting ;)
    – Mark Henderson
    Dec 1, 2009 at 22:27
  • Heh, yeah, you're probably right!
    – phoebus
    Dec 1, 2009 at 22:28
  • Thanks for the links phoebus. I'll have a read through them.
    – user27780
    Dec 3, 2009 at 11:12
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I've had good experiences with Dragonara when fending off DDOS attacks.

The prices start at 199 USD/month.

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