Connection attempts cause global ban

[N8LHG]

Folks,

I get what seems like a rash of users who claim they are unable to connect. When I look at the log, there are connection attempt followed by a connection close. User never registers, and eventually they go into a "Global ban" state.

Any idea's what may be causing this? I see it quite a bit, but not much online about it except possible client issues. Anyone know the cause/fix?

[ngollan]

It's usually caused by clients "thrashing", i.e., connecting very frequently be it due to a bad connection or a broken client. It's a very simple check for only the client's IP address to lower load on the server (TLS handshakes are expensive).

It can become an issue though if you have a lot of clients sharing the same IP address, maybe because they're all behind the same NAT gateway, which the server would then mistakenly identify as a misbehaving client and create a global ban.

You can avoid that by tuning the "autoban" variables in the ini or through an admin interface.

[N8LHG]

Thanks for the response. It was pretty easy to guess client side, since there are many who have no problems at all.

I have the autoban options set to be very conservative, but the key here is, how do we fix the broken client? The thrashing continues. In some of these cases, its brand new installs. Versions are 1.2.8 on both sides, windows 7.

Thanks,

Mark.