Sort Users Online by IP address to find bots, spiders, etc.

[crabpaws]

Like almost all admins here, I'm concerned with floods of bots, spiders, etc. visiting my site.

In addition, I am on IPS Hosting, which charges according to user load measured over a 48-hour period. I have had my monthly hosting charges kicked into a higher (very expensive) bracket because of a single huge spike due to bots, spiders, etc.

I have been directed by IPS Support to monitor IPB's Users Online list for suspicious activity. This is made particularly difficult because the Users Online list cannot be sorted by IP address. (Duplicates and clusters of IP addresses are highly suspicious.)

IPB's Users Online list can be sorted by Member Name (exclusive of IP) and Last Click -- parameters I've never found useful -- but not by IP address, although IP address is displayed to admins.

I strongly suggest the ability to sort IPB's Users Online list BY IP ADDRESS be included in the tool to enhance its usefulness.

(The parens around the displayed IP addresses are unnecessary visual clutter and could be eliminated.)

Given that so many admins have problems with bots, spiders, etc. and for years have been directed to IPB's Users Online list, I wonder why this hasn't been done sooner!

 

[crabpaws]

This would make bot identification so much easier.
 

[crabpaws]

Any possibility this might be adopted in the next version tweak?

[crabpaws]

No interest? I'm sure this is of concern to many admins.

[Mopar1973Man]

Would be nice to identify spiders and bots walking the site instead of the standard "guest" list and having to do IP lookups for everyone. 

[Netherlord]

i support this!

[Lindy]

This isn't a woefully efficient feature to include in the core, so it's not likely you will see this anytime soon. It existed in IPB3 and caused a lot of performance drama. 

For those that require this, there is an existing marketplace plugin

[crabpaws]

That plug-in is not what I meant.

What I'm looking for is an easier way to spot suspicious aggregations of IP addresses or IPs with multiple sessions open.

Many of these would not identify themselves as USER-AGENTS. They are spam bots or some other nefarious waste of server load.

[crabpaws]

The user list can be sorted by Member Name (and Last Click -- sort of useless) and filtered by Registered vs Guests, why not enable sorting by IP address?

[Mopar1973Man]

On 2/29/2016 at 11:16 PM, Lindy said:

This isn't a woefully efficient feature to include in the core, so it's not likely you will see this anytime soon. It existed in IPB3 and caused a lot of performance drama. 

For those that require this, there is an existing marketplace plugin

By chance what was so bad about? Explain a bit about if you can Lindy...

[crabpaws]

Excellent question, Mopar1973Man. Would sorting by IP address utilize more server power than sorting by Member Name (or Last Click -- whaa???)?

I was thinking of a way to facilitate Blocking Bad Bots via htaccess

[Mopar1973Man]

I'm thinking that it has to do with making a database of all the bot IP's and having to call the database to idientify them all adding more database calls... But that's a guess from a logical thinking stand point. But Lindy would know more about it.

[crabpaws]

1 hour ago, Mopar1973Man said:

I'm thinking that it has to do with making a database of all the bot IP's and having to call the database to idientify them all adding more database calls... But that's a guess from a logical thinking stand point. But Lindy would know more about it.

That would be very nice indeed.

But a simple sort by IP added to Users Online would be a significant improvement that would take a minimum of IPS investment and processing power.

[crabpaws]

Sorry to see Sort by IP address is still not in the sort options for Users Online.