My website was down... How did i protect it from ddos attack

 I decided to post this entry after a difficult situation that had occurred to my business when my 5 year work had been ruined in no time as a result of DDoS attack, a phenomenon I had never heard of before. Previously, I have a concept that the competition on the Internet features honest race when a company tries to become a leader in the market by offering its services more qualitatively and more efficiently. But I was mistaken…

It’s been for several years that I have been running an Internet casino with the turnover of about $500,000 a month. I prefer to not unveil the name of my business so as to avoid getting on impostors’ nerves who hit my website with DDoS over one month ago. Let me elaborate this situation.

I don’t remember the exact date but nearly 5 weeks ago I was working in the administrator’s section of my online casino. Having finished my preparations and changes to the website I quitted from the administrator’s area and decided to check up if all the alterations I had made were correctly displayed on the website of my Internet casino. I printed the domain address and pressed Enter. I was astounded to find my site opening with unnaturally low speed for the first time since I had launched my casino. I waited for 15 minutes and then again tried to enter my website but I faced the same problem again. The one thing that changed was that the site was now loading even more slowly. Before this accident the homepage of my casino opened within 7-10 seconds. That time it took 50 seconds for the page to load. Then it came to my mind that it was my programmer who was working with the website. But as I found out my supposition was wrong and my programmer was not at that time online, my Yahoo Messenger indicated that he was absent. I decided to open my website once again with the thought that maybe there was something wrong with the hosting. But this time the website didn’t open at all. I tried again and again but in vain, as I only could see a blank screen which meant the homepage of my Internet casino was not loading.

In had nothing to do but to inquire my hosting provider. To my surprise they responded to my ticket immediately. The message told that my website was down and hit by DDoS attack. Besides, in the message I read that DDoS was also attacking my DNS servers and therefore my provider had to unplug my server.

Frankly speaking I had no idea of the essence of DDoS at that time. Having googled the subject I found the article posted in the Ecommerce Journal that told about DDoS attack and realized that my business was challenged by serious problems. After I gained a sufficient understanding of what DDoS attack was and who stood behind them I decided to follow the article advice and wait to see what would happen next. The conclusion suggested itself: it was my competitors who initiated the attack. There was no other explanation to my website’s downtime.

As long as there was nobody to extort money from me by threatening with DDoS attack on my website I decided to ask for DDoS protection services. In the search results provided by Google to my query about DDoS protection I saw the names of such companies as Blockdos.net, Dragonara.net, Ddosprotection.com, Blacklotus.net, gigabitdc.com and so on. I examined price rates and feedbacks related to a number of companies and decided to choose DDoS protection services offered by Dragonara.net. One more reason to select this company was that I had read about it in the article at the Ecommerce Journal where I had learned about DDoS attacks and hosting providers with DDoS protection.

In order to protect my website against DDoS attacks I send a message to the Support Service of Dragonara.net and in an hour I received the following response:

Dear Sir,

We recommend our WebPIPE DDoS protection suite for websites hosted remotely (outside Dragonara.net DC):

Easy to Install, no need to change hosting location DDoS Protection Solution.

Change domain(s) DNS to the new dedicated IP provided by Dragonara.Net, get traffic cleaned
and returned back to your remote server, where web (or multimedia) server is running.
The most cost effective DDoS mitigation technique.

+200 mbit/s included (can be upgraded) with peaks up to 500 mbit/s; 
  (We use 95burstable billing scheme.)
+Web Caching Service (optional);
+Multi-Gig Protection Available;
+Money Back Guarantee.

$499 / monthly / Instant Setup

Solution described above is available for instant installation. 
Installation is easy as 1,2,3.

Available payment options: bank wire, webmoney, liberty reserve, perfectmoney, paypal and moneybookers.

I did what they had recommended. In the control panel of my domain I entered DNS address of Dragonara, paid for DDoS protection via PayPal and waited. In just 2-3 hours my website started loading. I didn’t think that my problem would be solved in such a short time. In some blog I read that DDoS attack may intensify. In fear of such scenario I refreshed the page of my website and it loaded smoothly. But sometimes it loaded slowly but it was better than nothing. Fortunately for me DDoS attack didn’t intensify a day later and even after two days. And after three days I received a message from Dragonara who advised me that DDoS attack on my website ceased.

Thus, I decided to stay DDoS protected so as to provide customers of my Internet casino with reliable and uninterrupted service. During these three weeks I have been hit with a number of other DDoS attacks but they failed and my website remained stable. Over the period of downtime I have lost 15% of my clients who have never returned to me, but the rest of them stayed loyal to my website in spite of DDoS attack that lasted for several days.