IP Banned (kinda)?

MetaMario

Hello,
so the last couple of months when I load up the forums, I just get a message saying my IP was banned by the admins. And other times, evidenced by me writing this post, everything is okay and I can log in just fine.

Soooo what causes this? I know these days I'm not the most active but I check in every now and then. A friend guessed this:

the only thing that makes sense to me is that you have some area in which you have an okay ip, and some area in which your ip is set to a banned one

I do use

! a VPN but this wasn't even an issue when I started using it. Maybe things changed??

kmohyudin

When you connect via a vpn, arlong park sees not your ip, but the vpn's ip. That's a pretty big reason for using a vpn in the first place. The vpn has a limited number of ip's that can be used to send your data to arlong park. If someone else using the vpn was ip banned from arlong park, and you happened to be assigned the same ip that the person was using while they were banned, you will see that message.

IMO ip banning is stupid and shouldn't be done, unless it becomes a global practice to assign static ips to ALL internet users, which itself would be very bad for a number of reasons, and also wouldn't completely solve the problem with ip banning. Frankly, there is little it offers to stop someone using the service, while it inconveniences others needlessly.

RoboBlue

@kmohyudin:

When you connect via a vpn, arlong park sees not your ip, but the vpn's ip. That's a pretty big reason for using a vpn in the first place. The vpn has a limited number of ip's that can be used to send your data to arlong park. If someone else using the vpn was ip banned from arlong park, and you happened to be assigned the same ip that the person was using while they were banned, you will see that message.

IMO ip banning is stupid and shouldn't be done, unless it becomes a global practice to assign static ips to ALL internet users, which itself would be very bad for a number of reasons, and also wouldn't completely solve the problem with ip banning. Frankly, there is little it offers to stop someone using the service, while it inconveniences others needlessly.

We've had major problems with bots and IP bans ended up being a necessary part of the solution.

Foolio

Yeah, almost all of our banned IPs are either known malicious ranges or were necessary to counteract massive bot onslaughts. I don’t know why you’re using a VPN to connect to AP but clearly the particular service you picked is using IPs that were abused at some point. We’d be able to at least look into the specifics if you could provide some of the IPs in question.

kmohyudin

@RoboBlue:

We've had major problems with bots and IP bans ended up being a necessary part of the solution.

@Foolio:

Yeah, almost all of our banned IPs are either known malicious ranges or were necessary to counteract massive bot onslaughts. I don’t know why you’re using a VPN to connect to AP but clearly the particular service you picked is using IPs that were abused at some point. We’d be able to at least look into the specifics if you could provide some of the IPs in question.

Thanks for the info.

Just to clarify, I am not criticizing arlong parks practice of banning ip's specifically, but the practice in general. I am ignorant of the problems you face and the specifics of the system; and therefore cannot weigh in on any potential solutions. However, generally speaking IP banning is not a good solution, as it requires active moderation, is not scalable, is inconvenient to the service provider and the user etc. There are better solutions out there that I am sure you guys have considered and rejected based on the specifics of your use case.

MetaMario

Thanks for the responses.