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Icanhazip: A simple IP address tool survived a deluge of users (2021)

blog.apnic.net

51–60 of 146 posts

Re: Icanhazip: A simple IP address tool survived a deluge of users (2021)

#51
post #43

Slightly related: There used to be a DNS server that you could query a TXT record and the response would include the IP of the server that submitted the query. You could use it to debug DNS issues. I thought it was from DNS-OARC but I can't find it anywhere. Does anyone know a way to accomplish this?

I believe you're thinking of OpenDNS:

dig -4 +short myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com

Re: Icanhazip: A simple IP address tool survived a deluge of users (2021)

#52
post #43

Slightly related: There used to be a DNS server that you could query a TXT record and the response would include the IP of the server that submitted the query. You could use it to debug DNS issues. I thought it was from DNS-OARC but I can't find it anywhere. Does anyone know a way to accomplish this?

"https://myresolver.info/" was good while it lasted. It used stupid DNS tricks to show your resolver in the browser:

https://web.archive.org/web/20131126131155/https://ndkyez8kh...

Re: Icanhazip: A simple IP address tool survived a deluge of users (2021)

#53
post #43

Slightly related: There used to be a DNS server that you could query a TXT record and the response would include the IP of the server that submitted the query. You could use it to debug DNS issues. I thought it was from DNS-OARC but I can't find it anywhere. Does anyone know a way to accomplish this?

dig +short TXT o-o.myaddr.l.google.com @ns1.google.com

[deleted]

Re: Icanhazip: A simple IP address tool survived a deluge of users (2021)

#54
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 2021, the traffic I once received in a month started arriving in 24 hours. The site went from a billion requests per day to 30-35 billion requests per day over a weekend. 30 billion times 350 bytes (size of my response) is equal to 10.5 terabytes (base-10) a day. 84 terabits per day, 84000/3600/24 ~= 1 gigabit if my math is right. A fully saturated 1 gigabit pipe of worldwide internet costs a lot. So, there.

Really interesting. I never heard of this website and was surprised to hear this volume of traffic it's getting. (I always used curlmyip.org or whatsmyip.net|.com). I wonder what is the rationale for providing a non-rate limited service that can be easily abused like this. The volume almost suggests some stuff like IoT devices or other software use this to test internet connectivity. Or botnets?

>Seeing that over 90% of my traffic load was malicious and abusive was frustrating. Dealing with the abuse emails and complaints was worse.

My take. I suspect Cloudflare benefited allowing that traffic. It's another data point/tool in their toolbox against the baddies.

Re: Icanhazip: A simple IP address tool survived a deluge of users (2021)

#55
post #30

For ridiculously easy things like this, I think it's smarter for you to just host it yourself. This way you are not forcing other people to carry your burden. nginx config example: location /ip { add_header Content-Type "application/json"; return 200 '{"host":"$server_name","ip":"$remote_addr","port":"$remote_port","server_ip":"$server_addr","server_port":"$server_port "}\n'; } Which will return something like this i…

This will return the wrong results when used behind a load balancer

Anything would return proxy/LB address. So do not use it behind LB/proxy/NAT.

Re: Icanhazip: A simple IP address tool survived a deluge of users (2021)

#56
post #49

Not related to the story of scaling the tech but rather to the IP business in 2023: I’m not affiliated with any of these services, but my goto has been ip4.me, ip6.me, and ip6only.me because they’re short and memorable and because they acknowledge the IPv4/IPv6 split. The first two domains give you your v4 and v6 IP respectively and the latter only resolves over IPv6 (useful to ensure your IPv6 is off when using a VP…

Icanhazip.com will do the same. They have ipv4.icannazip.com and ipv6.icannazip.com where they will return that.

so 3, 2 less memorable sites, ok got it

Re: Icanhazip: A simple IP address tool survived a deluge of users (2021)

#57
post #23

Not related to the story of scaling the tech but rather to the IP business in 2023: I’m not affiliated with any of these services, but my goto has been ip4.me, ip6.me, and ip6only.me because they’re short and memorable and because they acknowledge the IPv4/IPv6 split. The first two domains give you your v4 and v6 IP respectively and the latter only resolves over IPv6 (useful to ensure your IPv6 is off when using a VP…

Does Chrome not recognize the .me TLD? I just tried to type that ip4.me domain twice and it just sent me to search results.

Edge works just fine which is interesting.

Re: Icanhazip: A simple IP address tool survived a deluge of users (2021)

#58
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At $0.085 per GB (some us-east-1 exfil cost Google gave me), 10TB is... ~$1k/day? Yeah sorry, I would not pay $30k/mo so y'all could track your external IP addresses...

That's ridiculous bandwidth pricing. you can get unmetered gigabit at Hetzner for €20 per month. Need 2 Gb? Order a second server.

He was using Hetzner and says it was costing him $200/month. He then had to spin up a second server, presumably increasing the cost, and it was still struggling.

From there traffic doubled, and he moved to Cloudflare Workers. And then traffic 30xed.

I suspect it's more about request count (>300k per second) than raw number of bits.

Re: Icanhazip: A simple IP address tool survived a deluge of users (2021)

#59
The amount of intel Cloudflare obtains from this would be staggering. Just the TLS signatures alone is a goldmine. Look at the CISCO mercury product and their TLS database with malware detection. Or how Akamai bought https://www.fingerbank.org/

You got the short end of the stick for $8 reimbursement!

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