Access difficulties during the past 24 hours

[Dave]

Members,

Yesterday the IP address for our site, which we share with other sites on the same server, was the subject of a Denial of Service attack. The hosting company assigned a new IP address to all affected sites including ours.

When an IP address is changed, it has to be distributed to all the Domain Name Servers around the World so that your browser can translate your request for "douglasmotorcycles.net" into a unique IP address eg 123.45.678.9.

The time for this new IP address to reach your Domain Name Server (DNS) depends on how far away you are located from the host in Washington. For me here in Australia, it took 24 hours. During that period, which is known as the "propagation" time, our browsers are unable to locate the site because our local DNS is still using the old IP address.

For some Members it may take longer than 24 hours - possibly up to 48 hours. So if you have been unable to reach the site recently, this is probably the reason.

Dave

[Dave]

Yesterday there was a second Denial of Service attack on the IP address we share with other web sites. At the time of writing this message, I am still unable to access the site directly from Australia and am posting this message via a U.S. based server.

Unfortunately this is one of the disdvantages of a shared hosting service. We are exposed to problems created by the other sites with which we share resources.

Possible solutions are a dedicated IP or a dedicated server. The latter is too expensive for a small site like ours, the former is more affordable, but may require moving to a new hosting company as our present host only offers dedicated IP's under limited circuimstances.

The current host has been quite good for the past 30 months. But if these attacks continue, I will consider moving to a new host.

Dave

[Dave]

It took over 40 hours for the new IP address to reach us here in Australia following the second Denial of Service attack 2 days ago.

The good news is that the hosting company reported today:

We believe this should now be resolved...and we've isolated the target and have removed them from our network.

Let's hope that works out to be true.

In addition, I have subscribed to a service called CloudFlare which may help if there is a future attack.

My apologies to all who have been unable to access the site in the past few days. Unfortunately, it's one of the hazards in today's website world.

Dave