IDX·October 19, 2026·2 min read
A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack floods a service with traffic from many sources until real users cannot reach it. Attack services are rented cheaply, so targets range from banks and governments to online shops and game servers.
Three kinds of attack
- Volumetric attacks fill your network link with traffic, often amplified through misconfigured servers on the internet. Measured in gigabits or terabits per second.
- Protocol attacks exhaust the resources of servers, firewalls or load balancers, for example with floods of half-open connections.
- Application-layer attacks send requests that look legitimate, such as repeated searches or logins, to exhaust your application and database. They need far less traffic and are harder to tell apart from real users.
Protection works in layers
- At the network edge: upstream filtering and scrubbing that absorbs volumetric floods before they reach your link. This has to be done by your provider or a specialist service; no single server can absorb a flood bigger than its connection.
- At the server: firewalls, connection limits and kernel settings that cope with protocol attacks.
- At the application: rate limiting, caching, a CDN or web application firewall, and challenges for suspicious clients.
Prepare before you need it
- Know what protection your provider includes and what it does not.
- Put a CDN or proxy in front of public websites, and do not leak your origin server's address.
- Cache aggressively, so a flood of page requests does not reach the database.
- Have a contact and escalation path with your provider, agreed in advance.
- Monitor traffic so you notice an attack in minutes, not when customers call.
How IDX helps
IDX VPS Cloud plans include standard DDoS protection, and our network operations team monitors traffic on hosted infrastructure. For services that need more, our team can design layered protection for your dedicated servers, including filtering, rate limiting and NOC monitoring.
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