Welcome to the Ocean Loading Provider
Brought to you by
Hans-Georg Scherneck
and Machiel S.
Bos
After the overload incident 2026-05-29
For the time being, please log in
here:
Report
On Fri May 29 midnight, the MSN searchbot had overloaded the web
server, just like in a DoS attack.
It sent GET requests every two milliseconds. Basically they are out
for grabbing everything pixeled, .png etc.
MSN isn't the only bot but none has ever been that aggressive; I've
got evidence (logfiles) that MSN changed their tactics at that point
of time.
Repair
Upgrades of Apache2 and PHP were necessary, the latter being a bit
nasty.
I only hope the blocking code I inserted keep the bots out from the
html pages.
Consequence
New security feature
2026-06-03 - We have installed a long list of IP ranges used by
web crawlers and bots. We deny them access from now on.
If your IP is associated with one of the major providers, however,
it might match with those we deny.
The match is decided on behalf of the first two of the IP4
number's four parts.
You can click the link above and see whether you receive an error
code instead of the Welcome page.
If so, please
read here.
Sending requests by email has been possible and will continue to
be, see the
instructions.
You can also try the old
standard html form, no guarantees though.
Hope we now run with full functionality again.
Onsala, June 1, 2026
Hans-Georg Scherneck