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Hardware Upgrades
The site will see some downtime tonight after 8pm BST whilst we add some more RAM to 5 of our hardest working servers.
Total downtime shouldnt be more than 45 minutes, we will try to do as late as possible to cause the least inconvenience but are limited to the time slots the data centre can give us.
Thanks
Gazza
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A tiny percentage of IE6 (Internet Explorer Version 6) users may have some access problems today.
As a temporary solution we would recommend using Firefox http://www.getfirefox.com , this is eBid's favoured browser, a 3 minute download and install.
Alternatively an upgrade to IE7 will fix the problems.
Most users with IE6 won't find any problems at all. We apologise to those users who do find they have access problems. Access will be restored as soon as we are able to.
Gazza
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We will see around 15 minutes of site downtime at 3.40pm (BST) today to fix a problem with some auction feedbacks.
Gazza
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A tiny percentage of IE6 (Internet Explorer Version 6) users may have some access problems today.
As a temporary solution we would recommend using Firefox http://www.getfirefox.com , this is eBid's favoured browser, a 3 minute download and install.
Alternatively an upgrade to IE7 will fix the problems.
Most users with IE6 won't find any problems at all. We apologise to those users who do find they have access problems. Access will be restored as soon as we are able to.
Gazza
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Some live auction pages will be inaccessible today for around 15 minutes at about 2pm (BST).
Our apologies for this, a small repair is required to some auction data.
Gazza
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The access restrictions for the handful of IE6 users having problems are still in place and will be relaxed the second we are able to lift them.
Again we recommend upgrading to the current version of Internet Explorer or for greater speed when using eBid we highly recommend using Firefox http://www.getfirefox.com
Gazza
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The access restrictions for the handful of IE6 users having problems were lifted but have again had to be put in place due to matters beyond our control.
Again we recommend upgrading to the current version of Internet Explorer or for greater speed when using eBid we highly recommend using Firefox http://www.getfirefox.com
Gazza
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The IE6 access restrictions are in place due to a DoS attack that has been ongoing for a few weeks now. Now that we know the attacks are not sinister in their make up I can explain a little more.
Each browser has its own signature that helps us determine who is using what, IE6, IE7, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Safari, Opera etc. There is one signature that has been hitting us in huge spurts for around a month now and in order to keep the site online we have had to ban this one signature. The problem is that this signature is also used by a tiny handful of users still using IE6. For this reason a few users have been unable to gain access to eBid.
The browser signature is
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
Not all IE6 users are affected, only the ones with this exact signature. If you have any toolbars or addons added to your IE6 then this will differ the signature.
It turns out that the huge spike in hits comes from some anti virus software AVG, it is using this signature and pretending to be a human when checking for mailicous websites. Instead of doing good they are doing a great deal of harm by hammering sites, bringing them down, increasing bandwidth spend etc.
Here is more about it.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06...raffic_as_ie6/
So until we find another way to decipher AVG from human users with this browser signature or AVG decide to fix the problem themselves we are forced to keep it blocked.
I hope this explains the situation and as to why I haven't been able to explain it up until now.
Gazza
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We will be updating the Forbidden message with a more useful message later today.
You can see what your browser signature is on this page.
http://www.ebid.net/useragent.php
If it matches Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1) then we are currently unable to allow access.
Our apologies once more.
Gazza
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IE6 users who have been seeing the forbidden message should now have full access to eBid.
Gazza