Stats server down

[BobWilliams757]

Both work for me, and not much slowdown today. As for how long a browser will wait, I have no idea which settings control that. Some sites will timeout quickly, others will crawl along for at least a minute. I suspect connectivity and responses control much of it.

[Peter_Hucker]

They used to work for me most of them time, now they hardly ever work. I assume others are also having the problem. Clearly that amount of time is upsetting browsers and something needs to be done about it.

[DmitryKo]

I believe they start throttling database access when they think your browser makes too many requests to the web server. I've just refreshed several donor pages on my desktop PC, and the stats just stopped loading. I couldn't access them even on my phone. Yet when I turned off Wi-Fi and switch to mobile internet on my phone, these same stats loaded just fine.

I have a 300 Mbit/s wired Internet plan with a 4-port Gigabit Ethernet router on my end, and 10G fiber optic links from the backbone to managed switches installed in our apartment building on the ISP side, so bad connections can be ruled out.

[Peter_Hucker]

I look at my two accounts on here (because I added Gridcoin I have another username) once a day only. Around 15 seconds my browser gives up (I can't blame it, that is a very long time for a web page to respond).

[bollix47]

FYI, I'm not seeing any of the problems mentioned in this thread.

Have you tried clearing your browser cache?

[Peter_Hucker]

It's not my end, I have 10 computers and they all do it with any browser. The problem is the server takes longer than the browser likes (about 50% of the time).

[DmitryKo]

It's not a browser, web server or Internet connection problem. The pages on stats.foldingathome.org open just fine - it's the embedded script which loads page chunks for actual stats, and draws that orange progress bar on the top.

It's either a performance degradation on the backend that renders static chunks from the folding stats database, or a badly implemented anti-DDOS feature which adds progressive processing delays when you exceed a certain request rate. So when there is a large number of users accessing stats from the same external IP block, all requests will be throttled...

[Peter_Hucker]

Seriously? They're limiting how many people on one ISP can access a certain page? Wow.

[DmitryKo]

They were probably trying to limit bots parsing stats data from the dynamic pages instead of the database text export files, as outlined in their FAQ:
https://foldingathome.org/support/faq/s ... rent-stats

[Peter_Hucker]

If it's not intentionally harmful, it'll only come from a few sources, those could be blocked individually instead of stopping a DDOS from anywhere. Not quite sure why anyone would DDOS Folding@Home. Who have they annoyed enough for that kind of revenge?

Am I invoking a limiter by asking twice at once? I have two bookmarks in my browser, one for each account as I changed name when I started using Gridcoin. I open both together.

[Peter_Hucker]

I wonder if me failing to download them is dropping my bonus stats? When I get repeated EOF errors then it tries to get a different workunit?

Also, is it possible to put one computer on a different passkey but with the same username?

[Joe_H]

Seriously? They're limiting how many people on one ISP can access a certain page? Wow.

As far as I know they just block by IP number, not entire ISPs. If you have been leaving all of your systems running with the web control open, try closing that when you are not actively checking or changing settings. If you have multiple ones open, they are contacting the stats servers regularly to update that part of their display, and that might be enough to trigger the rate limiter.

Not quite sure why anyone would DDOS Folding@Home. Who have they annoyed enough for that kind of revenge?

Some just do it because they can. Others because of some perceived slight, really or imaginary. I have seen enough crazy to no longer bother looking for the exact reasons, just deal with the results and move on.

Also, is it possible to put one computer on a different passkey but with the same username?

Yes. You can configure any computer with any username and passkey pair you want. They are not linked except at WU download and upload time. Each username/passkey pair needs the same 10 WU return before bonus points will be awarded.

[Peter_Hucker]

I have the web control open 24/7, I didn't realise it was checking stats online. I thought it just spoke to my other computers. It's sat on another screen to my right along with Boinctasks so I can see what every computer is running and spot anything malfunctioning. I only run one instance though. Can I turn the stats check off? If not, what if I installed an adblocker and blocked the display of stats in the top right, would that be enough so it didn't keep phoning home?

Do I have to generate a passkey somewhere? Or do I just make one up? I was thinking I'd put the dodgy computer onto a different passkey, then at least if it messes up again it will only lose me bonus points for itself. Would a different passkey seperate the bonus points?

[Peter_Hucker]

Nevermind the passkey - I've decided it makes no difference. If I seperate the bad computer, it loses the bonus quicker but for only one computer, and it takes longer to get the bonus back but only loses it for one machine. Everything ends up being equal.

[Joe_H]

You said never mind, but for future reference only passkeys generated by the passkey app - https://apps.foldingathome.org/getpasskey - are accepted. If you use the same username and email address, you get the same passkey sent to you. Change either and you get a different passkey. You don't have to use the same username in the folding client as was used in the passkey app.