"Flood" of Duplicate IP Addresses Showing On Site Simultaneously

I have searched the forums but have found no specific reference to this problem: I have a client using the latest stable release of Zen Cart. The client is reporting that they are seeing 'floods' of duplicate IP addresses showing up on the site at the exact same time. These do not seem to me to be a Denial of Service attack (not enough volume) but there is obviously something going on. The IP's will show (simultaneously) to be viewing multiple pages and products at the same instant and then just as quickly the IP's will drop-off.

Is this a common occurrence? Is it a "false positive", a flaw in Zen Cart's admin screens?

Any help would be appreciated...

Thanks,
Chris

If a visitor is not logged in, a new session can be created as they navigate through the store

chrislg1970:

Is this a common occurrence? Is it a "false positive", a flaw in Zen Cart's admin screens?I'm not aware of any false-positives in the current code (v1.3.8a as of this writing).

When you say "floods", are you talking about 10, 100, or 1000?
Are these who's-online entries colored with a pink background? If so, those are search-engine spiders ... which could easily exhibit the behavior you mention.

I get 2 to 6 like this from time to time. Doesn't happen often enough to mention it.

I see this behavior sometimes from AOL's proxy servers too,

JOhn ><>

DrByte:

I'm not aware of any false-positives in the current code (v1.3.8a as of this writing).

When you say "floods", are you talking about 10, 100, or 1000?
Are these who's-online entries colored with a pink background? If so, those are search-engine spiders ... which could easily exhibit the behavior you mention.

These are not search engine spiders (I checked to make sure) and they don't come from any one origin or country. There can be as many as 80 of them at any given time or 80 instances of the same IP, rather. And it's not always the same IP either - there's no rhyme or reason.

We've been seeing the same thing on some of our carts. Most of the IPs (if you do a Google search) show up on lists of bad bots or scrapers.

I was hoping to find a way to stop them. When they show up our good bots leave and with the number of pages they hit at once, it has to be slowing the site down too. So far we've just been IP banning them one at a time, but I would love to find a way to stop them before they hit.

Any and all suggestions will be greatly appreciated! :(

Basically, banning ips is not a good solution, since the ips are not fixed.
I dont see a good and cheap solution for this. This is a fundamental problem with the internet in general, everyone can send you packages/requests, and you dont really know what it is until you open the package.