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Normal AOL proxy behavior or DOS attack?

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ja

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Nov 13, 2003, 1:58:28 PM11/13/03
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Noticed a funny behavior in my IIS log files.

It seems a request for one webpage is showing as coming from 6 different IP
addresses.
pic1 on webpage requested by 1 IP, pic2 on the same page by another IP and
pic3 by a third IP etc. etc.

All IPs are AOL proxy IPs:
198.81.26.44
198.81.26.103
198.81.26.110
etc. etc

Is this normal AOL proxy behavior?


Phil Frisbie, Jr.

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Nov 13, 2003, 2:08:30 PM11/13/03
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Yes.

--
Phil Frisbie, Jr.
Hawk Software
http://www.hawksoft.com

ja

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Nov 13, 2003, 3:14:53 PM11/13/03
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Why do they do it that way? It must be a nightmare to backtrack if one of
their users cause problems on the net.


"Phil Frisbie, Jr." <ph...@hawksoft.com> wrote in message
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Jerry III

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Nov 16, 2003, 12:02:03 AM11/16/03
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Not really, it's simply a load balanced proxy. The tracking is actually a
lot easier as all their users requests go through their servers. That gives
them complete control over what their users see and what they don't. And
they're AOL, they don't care that they're just creating a lot of problems
for others.

Jerry

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Bernard

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Nov 16, 2003, 6:43:58 AM11/16/03
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Jerry,

I have one NLB site that straight away give 'session timeout'
error, if you access via AOL browser. do you think that it is
related to this ?

if user access direct to one of the host via dedicated IP or
FQDN, everything work fine. why this that ? and from research
seems like AOL users have this problem for a long time and
nobody care.

--
Regards,
Bernard Cheah
http://support.microsoft.com/
Please respond to newsgroups only ...

"Jerry III" <jerr...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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Jerry III

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Nov 17, 2003, 1:16:25 PM11/17/03
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I don't think that's the issue. That "sessions timeout" is most likely
caused by your servers not sharing session state (regular ASP can't do this
and Asp.Net needs to be setup to do that) or your servers might have
different times (which would cause problems to Asp.Net's sessions as they're
timestamped).

Jerry

"Bernard" <qber...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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Bernard

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Nov 28, 2003, 11:03:02 PM11/28/03
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Sorry man, been travelling abit..

well, the NLB setting is set to 'single' affinity. so it
will always stick with one server and session is not shared.

--
Regards,
Bernard Cheah
http://support.microsoft.com/
Please respond to newsgroups only ...

"Jerry III" <jerr...@hotmail.com> wrote in message

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Jerry III

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Nov 29, 2003, 2:58:28 AM11/29/03
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Well, if you're going to stick to single servers then what's the point? You
neither have a load balanced servers (since most of the requests will be
directed to their servers, not to ones with the least load) nor fail-over
servers. Why exactly would you then use multiple servers?

Jerry

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Bernard

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Nov 30, 2003, 10:30:08 PM11/30/03
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NLB is for load balancing. if I have 3 hosts with 4500 connections,
each of them will get 1.5k. because of 'non-shared' sessions - each
users when connected, will always 'talk' to the same host throughout
entire session. This is scale out when you don't scale UP.

the problem now is IE, Netscape work fine with the NLB, only AOL
having this problem. I suspects it could be their proxy server related
issue.

--
Regards,
Bernard Cheah
http://support.microsoft.com/
Please respond to newsgroups only ...

"Jerry III" <jerr...@hotmail.com> wrote in message

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Jerry III

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Dec 1, 2003, 5:25:19 AM12/1/03
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The issue is definitely AOL's proxy servers, I have seen requests from a
single user coming from different IPs. There's not much you can do unless
you buy AOL and make them change that.

Sticky sessions are never a good idea on multiple servers, you're always
going to have issues with users not sticking to the right server (most of
times because the server will be overloaded or not available at all, at
which point you might have to question why exactly are you balancing if
you're still affected by a single server going down).

Jerry

"Bernard" <qber...@hotmail.com> wrote in message

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Bernard

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Dec 1, 2003, 5:46:18 AM12/1/03
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Mm... looks like we both have the same view. it's AOL related.
I know your concern about the sticky sessions, with external
stateserver, you might have problem as well, if the stateserver
is having problem. with the current one. at any one time, the
max lost is one box, if the app restarted or entire box failed.
and user will have to reconnect and get connect to another host.

Thanks for your AOL info.

--
Regards,
Bernard Cheah
http://support.microsoft.com/
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