Rate limits: 20k -> 150 - known issue

[Chad Etzel]

Hello all,

We have been flooded with emails asking why whitelisted IPs have been
reduced from the 20k rate-limit down to the normal 150 rate-limit.
This is a known issue and we are working as hard as we can on
resolving it. We thank you for your patience as we are dealing with
everything going on with the DDoS.

Thanks,
-Chad

[Chris Corriveau]

Chad

How does a DDoS change the rate limit from 20K to 150? This has been going on since yesterday, so nothing new here. Is it a bandwidth issue or something else?

Also are you still getting hit with a DDoS?

Chris-

[alon]

The whitelisted ips are not just reduced. they are totally blocked. i
cant get a response from twitter using my server. totally blocked.
Only effects whitelisted. No matter authenticated or not.

On Aug 7, 11:34 pm, Chris Corriveau <chris.corriv...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Chad
>
> How does a DDoS change the rate limit from 20K to 150? This has been going
> on since yesterday, so nothing new here. Is it a bandwidth issue or
> something else?
>
> Also are you still getting hit with a DDoS?
>
> Chris-
>

[Chris Corriveau]

alon,

This is happening intermittently. Sometimes they are completly blocked other times they are allowed 150.

Chris-

[chinaski007]

My IPs quickly go back to 20k/hour if I turn off cron jobs. When I
turn on cron jobs (and thus do a large number of API calls), the IPs
quickly descend into 150/hour hell.

[Paul Kinlan]

Hi Chad,

I think we all appreciate the pressure you are under and the flak that
you are taking for events outside your control, and we all wish we
could help more.

But for an open communications company that is postioning itself as
the future platform for messaging - there has been so little
communication and feedback to the developers in your community that it
is simply shocking.

Little things such as statements that we as developers can use to pass
to our users with regards to issues currently affecting the service
would help immensly. I have spent my Friday night responding to over
150 emails asking why twollo is down - all I can say is I think it is
related to current events and Twitter aren't telling us anything. This
doesn't inspire confidence in users of my service and of twitters'

The situation is reminisent to the oauth situation the other month.
Next to no communication at all.

We all love your service and want to build on top of it and help it
grow and our own services too.

From my own, probably selfish point of view the app engine is
completly blocked at the moment and as far as I can tell we have no
indication if it is up yet - I can't tell correctly as I am in bed
writing this.

Paul

[Chris Corriveau]

Ahmen Paul, glad I'm not the only one that shares you sentiments. I
had previously emailed Ryan something similar. What surprises me is
how little they care to share with the developers who made thier
service what it is.

I also can't fathom how many other developers have yet to tell Twitter
this and act like this is new. This DDoS has gone on for 2 days and
counting and 29 hours for them to say something ro us developers is
really unprofessional.

Chris-

[Peter Denton]

Hey everyone,
I just wanted to share one quick thought about this.

I know everyone is really on edge here, but it might be they don't have any information or know resolution time frames. As was already expressed, people were upset Biz said "systems back to normal". Maybe they don't want to do the same thing again and further add to frustration.

Again, it is a bad bad situation for everyone. Twitter is not the enemy.

Regards
Peter

[Chris Corriveau]

Agreed Twitter is not the enemy but they need to start being honest. They ate more concerned now with spin and their public image than being honest with developers and that know the truth. We all just want it fixed and back to normal but tell us when there is an issue an when you think it would be fixed. It isn't something hard to do and something I do for all my clients.

-----------------

Chris Corriveau

Sent from my iPhone

[Chad Etzel]

Hi Paul (and everyone),

Thanks for your appreciation and your comments.

On a personal note: I started my support role this week, which is
supposed to be part-time. Well, as you can imagine that went out the
window. I have all but abandoned my other work-related
responsibilities for the past two days in order to help with the API
communications with Twitter.

As you noted, when your site goes down you get a lot of email.
Likewise, there is an amazing flood of emails coming into Twitter (not
counting this dev-list) all asking similar questions and demanding
answers. This has created a DDoS on the API Support team's time, in a
manner of speaking :)

I think Ryan did a good job communicating what we do and don't know in
his email this morning, and we have tried to communicate things when
we can.

During the course of this DDoS, the attackers have changed tactics and
so our Ops team have had to change their tactics in defense of the
attack. This is happening so often that we don't want to communicate
something out to the community that will be nullified by the next
move. Our opinion is, that would create more thrashing and frustration
from the community. We have been trying to communicate workarounds and
information that has become permanent or stable as a way to deal with
the attacks.

As Peter noted, we have nothing new to share at the moment, except to
say that this thing is still ongoing, and we're having to ride it out
with you guys. We certainly know that the 3rd party apps make Twitter
great (I've had to tweak code on my personal apps as well), and we
don't want to alienate you. Unfortunately we don't have an ETA on
resolving all of the problems because we don't have an ETA on the DDoS
:)

We will continue to post updates as we can. Again, we know this sucks
for you guys, and we really do appreciate everyone being patient with
us.

Thanks,
-Chad

[Chris Corriveau]

Thank you Chad. Details is really what we want and just next time as
it happens is all not a day later. We all understand the stress and
unpredictability of the situation.

-----------------
Chris Corriveau
Sent from my iPhone

[Rich]

My curl stuff was working fine, but not it appears to have been
limited again. Sorry but this is getting soooo frustrating. 3 days
later and things still aren't working

On Aug 8, 1:13 am, Chris Corriveau <chris.corriv...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you Chad. Details is really what we want and just next time as  
> it happens is all not a day later. We all understand the stress and  
> unpredictability of the situation.
>
> -----------------
> Chris Corriveau
> Sent from my iPhone
>

> > On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 7:16 PM, Paul Kinlan<paul.kin...@gmail.com>  

[Eric]

Any idea when the limit will be increased to 20,000? I'm sure myself
as well as other sites are suffering a bit because of the limitation
of API calls.

> On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 7:16 PM, Paul Kinlan<paul.kin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi Chad,
>
> > I think we all appreciate the pressure you are under and the flak that you
> > are taking for events outside your control, and we all wish we could help
> > more.
>
> > But for an open communications company that is postioning itself as the
> > future platform for messaging - there has been so little communication and
> > feedback to the developers in your community that it is simply shocking.
>
> > Little things such as statements that we as developers can use to pass to
> > our users with regards to issues currently affecting the service would help
> > immensly.  I have spent my Friday night responding to over 150 emails asking
> > why twollo is down - all I can say is I think it is related to current
> > events and Twitter aren't telling us anything. This doesn't inspire
> > confidence in users of my service and of twitters'
>
> > The situation is reminisent to the oauth situation the other month. Next to
> > no communication at all.
>
> > We all love your service and want to build on top of it and help it grow and
> > our own services too.
>
> > From my own, probably selfish point of view the app engine is completly
> > blocked at the moment and as far as I can tell we have no indication if it
> > is up yet - I can't tell correctly as I am in bed writing this.
>
> > Paul
>

[Michael Chang]

On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 5:23 PM, Eric <eric.ga...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

Any idea when the limit will be increased to 20,000? I'm sure myself
as well as other sites are suffering a bit because of the limitation
of API calls.

Please read the history of the mailing list. There *IS NO ETA* on anything; it merely depends on whether the people who are "spamming" (i.e. DoSing) twitter ever decide to go away or not.

As has been said before, you can help by throttling your program based on what twitter's services tell you to throttle to. Provided that your app behaves, your app's limit may be increased when there is capacity for the system to handle it.

You have my sympathies, but at least it's not your site which is being DoS-ed, so do please have consideration for the time and hard work of the staff at twitter.

--
Thanks,

Michael Chang

[Sultan Saadat]

I think the twitter service is still down due to the DDOS attacks. Its
not allowing to register new applications. I am trying to make my
application work for the past 2 days now and without any success.
Fails during authentication. Some issue with the oauth module.

> > > The situation is reminisent to theoauthsituation the other month. Next to

> > > no communication at all.
>
> > > We all love your service and want to build on top of it and help it grow and
> > > our own services too.
>
> > > From my own, probably selfish point of view the app engine is completly
> > > blocked at the moment and as far as I can tell we have no indication if it
> > > is up yet - I can't tell correctly as I am in bed writing this.
>
> > > Paul
>
> > > On 7 Aug 2009, at 21:09, Chad Etzel <c...@twitter.com> wrote:
>
> > >> Hello all,
>
> > >> We have been flooded with emails asking why whitelisted IPs have been
> > >> reduced from the 20k rate-limit down to the normal 150 rate-limit.
> > >> This is a known issue and we are working as hard as we can on
> > >> resolving it. We thank you for your patience as we are dealing with
> > >> everything going on with the DDoS.
>
> > >> Thanks,

> > >> -Chad- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -