static IP traffic increase

[GO ILLINI]

This may seem a little off-topic, but there is not a better category here and this is the webhosting forum that I am used to using. Hopefully someone among you will understand and resolve my problem!

I have always been hosting my website using a domain name through DynDNS with a dynamic IP. Recently (last week), I upgraded to static IP service. Since then, my traffic has increased by about %60 (up to several hundred visits/day from 100-200/day). I am identifying this through awstats.

This seems unusual to me. Is my website suddenly more available to more people? Is the more permanent propagation increasing my availability to more countries? Or, is it now just easier for hackers (or just malicious people) to find my server. But, the increase isn't big enough to cause any problems whatsoever.

The increase also applies to my most popular pages:
CHROOT jail tutorial
file transfer time calculator
Old CHROOT jail tutorial

but now, my homepage (useless) is also getting many hits (right below the stats of the above pages).


My basic question:
Do I have something to be worried about (malicious probes), or do I have something to be excited about (more traffic!)?

Thanks guys!
-Adam

[120]

It's not uncommon for web filters to block access to sites hosted on dynamic address space or that makes use of dynamic DNS type services.

It gets even worse if there is a link to the site in an email. There is at least one very popular anti-spam appliance that would usually drop mail for such a link.

I'm not surprised that shifting to a clearly defined static IP would improve things. I'm guessing that you no longer have your name records pointing at the DynDNS service(?) if not, shift the record away from such a service and you'll probably notice further improvements over time.

As for malicious probes and door knocking, it goes on *all* of the time. I've lost track of the Chinese hackers trying to proxy through Apache that I see, and the clumps of automated web application attack door knocks that come in. The options are to make sure your site has no vulnerabilities and, if you like, drop/block connections to frequent abusers. To get a handle on it, run through the server access logs looking for '404' errors. You'll probably get quite a shock at what people try to do :-)