```json
{
    "title": "Slowing The Flood: Firewall Tuning – Month 1",
    "url": "https://performancezen.com/2026/05/07/slowing-the-flood-firewall-tuning-month-1/",
    "datePublished": "2026-05-07",
    "dateModified": "2026-05-07",
    "language": "en-US",
    "description": "On Apr 01 2026, I reset my Apache server collection tracking so that the noisiest data prior to the implementation of my new firewall configuration would be eliminated. Since then,…",
    "author": "spierzchala",
    "publisher": "Performance Zen"
}
```

# Slowing The Flood: Firewall Tuning – Month 1

On Apr 01 2026, I reset my Apache server collection tracking so that the noisiest data prior to the implementation of [my new firewall configuration](https://performancezen.com/2026/04/02/enterprise-shield-on-dinosaur-hardware/) would be eliminated. Since then, the firewall has seen some tuning and iteration.

- **Apr 01-03 2026:** Initial tuning phase of the firewall and addition of largest blocks of known Hosting Providers and other malicious actors
- **Apr 04-28 2026:** Steady-state of firewall with occasional additions of new ASNs to the blocklist. During this period, all the major cloud providers (AWS, GCP, & Azure) were in a complete block state.
- **Apr 29 2026 - May 07 2026:** Impose rate limiting on Amazon/AWS and Google/GCP ASNs and *much stricter rate-limiting* on the Microsoft/Azure ASN. As well, integrated a process to add the [AbuseIPDB](https://www.abuseipdb.com/) Top 10K IPs dynamically on a schedule.

This process has had some noticeable effects on the volume of traffic captured in my logs. Although I pruned the data prior to Apr 01 2026, I will just say that the volume was much higher than you see at the start of the chart below.

![**Vistitor Traffic - Apr 01 - May 07 2026**](https://performancezen.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/image-1024x331.png)
**Vistitor Traffic - Apr 01 - May 07 2026**

I can say that the new tuned firewall deployment is working extremely well on [my ancient hardware](https://performancezen.com/2022/04/12/old-hardware-is-still-good-hardware/) and that working alongside my friend Claude has got this system to a state where it will likely continue to support a great deal of traffic for hopefully years to come.