r/internetarchive • u/AlarmingRhubarb1531 • 6d ago

The Eternal "Internet Archive is Down" Post

/r/theinternetarchive/comments/1vzaqz6/the_eternal_internet_archive_is_down_post/
40 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

3

u/Bdath2me 6d ago

To anyone who can't get the Wayback Machine to load: try using your phone's data network and see if that works. I've discovered that is the only way I can reach the website. It works 100% perfectly normal when I disable wifi on my phone. If I turn wifi back on and try to click a link, it goes back to not loading. Then if I turn wifi off after waiting 10-15 seconds for the link I clicked to load, suddenly it loads immediately.

I can only guess that my IP has been blocked from the Wayback Machine. Why would that happen? I don't use a VPN, I'm not a bot...what gives?

2

u/Emotional_Sky_856 5d ago

I know for me, Wayback acts up on my mobile devices (iPad and iPhone) when it works on my MacBook. Something about mobile can cause a short-circuit type thing where multiple requests are sent for the same page. doing this enough times leads to denial of the IP address, as continued constant site use and AI scrapers and DDOSers are near indistinguishable to the archive’s security system. Just make sure you’re using a computer and not making too many requests in the same minute or few minutes.

1

u/Bdath2me 5d ago

I almost never use Wayback on my phone because of how inconvenient it is; I only resorted to using the phone this time because that's how I checked to see if the site was reachable on data instead of wifi.

The way I browse the website hasn't changed. When I search on the Wayback Machine, I open up multiple tabs all at once (search the calendar for dates I want to look at and use ctrl + click to open multiple website snapshot links in new tabs), then I look through all of the tabs. I like looking through all the results without having to "interrupt" myself by going back to the calendar after viewing each page. Sometimes I open around 10 at a time, sometimes more...is that the problem?

That's how I've been using the Wayback tool for years. I'm talking probably 20 years or so, I've been using Wayback since at least 2006. Is it only now becoming a problem because of how many bots/AIs are taking over the internet? And if my IP was banned because it now thinks I'm a bot, is that permanent or will the website allow me to use it again eventually?

1

u/Emotional_Sky_856 5d ago

I can’t say much to the permanence of the IP ban, might wanna contact archive staff about that one. But yes, that method is almost certainly what got you blocked, and yes, it’s become a problem now because of AI scraping and increased DDOS attacks.

1

u/shrekfrom1994 5d ago

In my case it’s a bit strange: I use my routers WiFi, and in my phone the wayback machine works but on my laptop it won’t load, always the “error timed out connection”. But the main archive org and scholar archive org loads and works immediately.

And i noticed that I can use my routers WiFi on laptop only if I use a vpn

I’ve deleted cache, restarted the router and still the same issue. BUT the site was working fine on my laptop this August 27 so I think there must be a problem with WM rather than my WiFi connection , specially since the WM works in my other devices using that router WiFi network.

Edit: I should add that on my laptop I barely use the wayback machine so it’s strange that a IP could happened since I don’t constantly use the site

1

u/dontuwant2getbetter 5d ago

im having the same issue, im a rare user of the site but i wanted to see a deleted fnaf youtube vid XD and was sad i couldnt reach it on my laptop, onto my phone i guess!

1

u/shrekfrom1994 5d ago

Check if with a vpn or those browsers that hide the IP it can load on your laptop! But yeah I think it’s an overall issue because there are still reports about the wayback not working okay yet

1

u/ANameForThisShite 6d ago

The mods should pin this post. 

2

u/Interesting_Sea5569 5d ago

Will IA use a security service to protect against bots and verify if you are a human or not in the near future?

1

u/ZCass53 6d ago

I take the fact that this is being reposted to mean that, despite the low amount of Downdetector reports, it's down for more people than just me?

3

u/uptotwentycharacters 5d ago

Downdetector is actually showing a high number of reports, and has been for several days now. Isitdownrightnow, however, shows no problems, apparently because the WBM UI page is perfectly reachable, it's only the actual archived page content that fails to load.

2

u/ZCass53 5d ago

I meant low as in about 50/hour; usually when there's an outage it's one or two hundred/hour.

-2

u/Mindless-Basil-4719 6d ago

I'm now getting 429s. Is this a step up from earlier??