Website is frequently down + error creating ticket

KaarinaS
2 years ago

1

Hello everyone,

I’ve tried to use the “contact us” form to contact the defend the web team for my issue but I keep getting “Error creating ticket”. What could be the problem here ?

I’ve decided to expose my issue here in case somone have an idea what’s going wrong and what I can do about it.

I have been using Defend the web for my Cyber Security classes in Business Scoool in Paris for a few years from now. We have a small 3 to 4 hour session where students go through the playgound using hints I provide and I explain them the underlying ideas, what the challenge is about, etc.

However, recently I have stumbled upon as an issue with a website being frequently down when students connect and use the playground. At first, I supposed the problem came from a number of connections to the website all coming from the same university and the same IP address. However, last week I had classes remotely and students connected to the website from their homes and the website was frequently going down, my students were unable to explore and play further. I have fewer than 40 students in my class but connecting simultaneously. Would the connections limit be so small for the website these days?

Could you suggest what could be a problem and would could be a possible solution to let students use the playgound simultaneously during the class at school or from home?

Thank you very much for your help in advance.

Zbell [zbell]
2 years ago

0

I have had no problem connecting to the web or doing exercises but I am not able to enter the forum and I am struck by the long inactivity in the few threads I am seeing. Also, no one has replied or reacted to my two posts asking questions on two exercises. The count of views seems to increase when I view my own post, so it is possible that no one has seen them.

All in all, I wonder at the lack of human activity, so I wanted to give feedback. Maybe the web is run on a small scale. If you let me know the time of your course, I can try to log in at that same time span and see if I experience difficulties.

KaarinaS
2 years ago

0

It is possible that the website have low activity lately. From the dashboard log it seems there is something happening every 10 min… When the website was down during the class I checked with https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/ that confirmed the website is down and 2-3 min later it was fine. It could be coming from the number of connections but I’m surprised the website cannot handle 40 users… when it was hackthis I used it with even bigger groups, if a remember correctly.
There are many alternative but the few I know seem less adapted for business students…
Would you mind checking if the “contact us” form doesn’t work for you as well ? I’ve tried to look for a development team on LinkedIn but i didn’t find anyone…

Zbell [zbell]
2 years ago

0

Hi,

I tried from Safari and from Firefox and I get “error creating ticket” in both cases. Maybe it only works from Windows? Accessing the lounge, it tells me to use a different browser.
The lack of discussion is remarkable, I wonder whether nobody has posted questions for years or whether they are not visible from my system. But maybe there is little activity because I started a few days ago with tthe simple challenges and the most recent solution would be hours old
Best,
Zbell

KaarinaS
2 years ago

1

Some active discussions on the forum are 10 years old =)
I hoped that as they have rebranded the website few years ago it will be growing again. Thus, nothing seems to change. I was surprised to see that have removed hints. Hints are very useful for inexperiences learners.

Maybe they have cut the support to minimise costs…