Huge number of simultaneous connections to the db server

[jl255]

My forum is running very slowly and even after disabling all plugins. The issue seems to be stemming from the huge number of connections that are being made to the database server. Currently there are over 5000 simultaneous connections and while there are only about 65 PHP processes, these are taking up a large amount of resources - possibly because of poor queries being made to the MySQL server.

I did check the queries that are running on MySQL and they are not running slowly - the server is responding well, but the forum server is just opening so many connections for whatever reason.

Can I get some assistance on this? My forum version is 3.8.7. Tks.

[jl255]

i've checked google analytics and it reports only 80 concurrent users. Though on my forum homepage, it reports 20000 active users, most of which are guests.

[jl255]

any help pls??
here's the link: http://bit.ly/14Ut0A

[BirdOPrey5]

It sounds like you are under some kind of Denial or Service attack (or something on your forum made the front page of a popular site.) Are the IP addresses of your 20,000 gusts random? If so not much you can really do about it other than shut down and wait for it to pass, 20,000 guests is going to slow down any forum.

Firsts step is to figure out if it is legitimate traffic or an attack. View your access logs to see where these guests are going- if it's one specific thread Google it, maybe it got posted somewhere. If it's your registration page or main homepage that sounds more like a malicious attack.