P411 is down due to a DDoS attack coming out of China, which is basically a huge amount of computerized traffic, far more than a server can handle. The goal is to render a site useless.
The ddos attack we are experiencing is "massive", and the ISP has blocked all traffic to P411 until it is under control. We've pulled the site completely offline for now.
I am working with numerous tech people to resolve the problem, but taking longer than anyone would like. All I can say is that we are working on it, and we're doing the best we can.
Just a pain in the butt..... and in trying to shut the DDoS down, we somehow shut our emails down. So I had to just put up an Out of Order sign, likely won't get it fixed until morning.
DDoS?
That's pretty serious. After you guys repair the site, you should probably consider investing a bit in a large data dump to prevent that in the future. It probably didn't really come from China either but was instead a series of re-routed sources. Maybe I'm wrong about the re-routing thing but developing a data dump with a threshold data shutoff that only targets the "average" data source locations of attack would help tremendously.
For those wondering, the data dump is kinda like a heat sink in modern electronics or an overflow tray except the overflow here is artificial and intended to cripple the server. The dump attenuates that and allows more time for the programmers and techs to implement countermeasures as the attack is happening and prevent site shutdown.
you should probably consider investing a bit in a large data dump to prevent that in the future.
We're very fortunate to have the resources to be able to set that up, so we are good for the future.
I just wish I would have gone that route prior to "learning the hard way".
Thanks to everyone for their suggestions and shared knowledge! I feel very blessed.
We all "learn the hard way".
It's the lessons that are the hardest to forget so it's a part of life.
I doubt you'll have that problem in the future ;-)
I'm glad to hear you have what you need to implement that security measure.
Best of luck Gina.