This article explains how DDoS protection works on HOSTDOG Cloud VPS and dedicated servers, what happens when an attack is detected, and the best practices you can follow to strengthen your server's resilience.

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack floods your server with massive amounts of traffic from many sources simultaneously. The goal is to overwhelm your server's resources — bandwidth, CPU, or memory — making your website or application unavailable to legitimate visitors.

DDoS attacks come in several forms:

• Volumetric attacks — Flood your network bandwidth (e.g., UDP floods, DNS amplification)
• Protocol attacks — Exploit protocol weaknesses to exhaust server resources (e.g., SYN floods)
• Application-layer attacks — Target specific services like HTTP to crash your web server

HOSTDOG servers are housed in data centers with built-in network-level DDoS mitigation. When an attack is detected:

1. Detection — Automated systems continuously analyse traffic patterns and identify anomalies that indicate an attack
2. Filtering — Malicious traffic is filtered at the network edge before it reaches your server, allowing legitimate traffic through
3. Mitigation — The attack is absorbed by the data center's mitigation infrastructure without affecting your server's performance

This protection is included at no additional cost with all Cloud VPS and dedicated server plans. [VERIFY: specific DDoS mitigation capacity in Gbps and exact provider details]

If you suspect your server is under a DDoS attack:

• Check your monitoring — Look for sudden spikes in traffic, CPU, or bandwidth usage in your server monitoring tools
• Open a support ticket — Contact HOSTDOG support immediately. Our team can investigate and apply additional mitigation if needed.
• Do not panic — Network-level protection handles most attacks automatically. Your server may experience temporary slowness while mitigation activates.

While HOSTDOG provides network-level protection, you can strengthen your server's resilience with these measures:

• Configure your firewall — Block unnecessary ports and restrict access to essential services only. See How to configure the VPS firewall.
• Use rate limiting — Configure your web server (Nginx or Apache) to limit the number of requests per IP address
• Enable a CDN — Services like Cloudflare can absorb application-layer attacks before traffic reaches your server
• Keep software updated — Outdated software may have vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit
• Monitor traffic patterns — Regular monitoring helps you identify unusual patterns early

• How to configure the VPS firewall
• Getting started with your HOSTDOG Cloud VPS
• Understanding HOSTDOG managed services
• How to monitor your server performance