server slowed to crawl

[jakeconsult]

I've got two installations of vbulletin running on the same apache server. As of a few hours ago the server has slowed to a crawl serving forum pages. The only difference is that I noticed over 1200 Guest users that aren't usually on the forums. Is there anyway to determine if this is definitely the cause of the slowdown? Has anyone else seen this type of behavior?

I'll provide any additional details I can, I just don't know where to start.

thanks.

[Steve Machol]

I'm not a server guru, but I do think that 1200 extra people (or search robots) on the forums would tend to have some impact on performance.

[jakeconsult]

We haven't done anything to generate that increase of traffic. Maybe I'm offbase on this, but I don't think that they are real users generating the traffic.

[Steve Machol]

If they are on the site, they are impacting the server. Most likely you are either getting hit with search engine robots, or someone is probing your site for exploits.

[jakeconsult]

Is there any way to determine that and if so stop them?

[Vtec44]

Is there any way to determine that and if so stop them?

You can always tracert the IP and ban them using .htaccess. That's an idiotic way of banning someone though