DDoS mitigation that keeps you online during the attack.
Glitch Guard is an always-on DDoS mitigation service. It absorbs volumetric floods on Tier 1 transit, scrubs the remainder at packet level and delivers only clean traffic to your server, with no null-routing and no waiting for a human.
What is DDoS mitigation?
DDoS mitigation is the active defence that runs while an attack is happening. It detects abnormal traffic, separates malicious packets from legitimate ones and drops the bad traffic before it can exhaust your bandwidth, CPU or connection table. Done well, your players and customers never notice an attack took place.
Mitigation is one part of wider DDoS protection, which also covers hardening, monitoring and alerting. If you want the fundamentals first, start with what a DDoS attack is or the prevention checklist.
No null-routing. Many providers blackhole your IP once an attack gets large, which finishes the attacker's job for them. Glitch Guard mitigates in line, so your server stays reachable.
Three stages, one pipeline.
Each layer removes a different class of attack, so nothing relies on a single filter.
Volumetric mitigation
Always-on, inline on Tier 1 transit (GTT backbone with Corero SmartWall). Detects and mitigates in under a second without redirecting your traffic. Included on every Glitch Servers service.
Packet-level filtering
Glitch Guard inspects and drops packets in the network driver using XDP. UDP amplification, IP fragments, ICMP floods and protocol-invalid packets are removed here.
Connection tracking
A SYN proxy completes TCP handshakes, out-of-state packets are discarded and new connections per source are limited, so connection-exhaustion attacks go nowhere.
Attack types Glitch Guard stops.
A quick map of common attacks and the filter that deals with them. See real-world DDoS attack examples for more detail.
| Attack | Layer | How it's mitigated |
|---|---|---|
| Volumetric floods | Network (L3/L4) | Absorbed inline on Tier 1 transit in under a second |
| UDP amplification / reflection | Network (L3/L4) | UDP Amplification Guard drops reflected responses |
| SYN floods | Transport (L4) | SYN cookies and SYN proxy, TCP state validation |
| IP fragment attacks | Network (L3) | IP Fragment Filter |
| ICMP floods & probes | Network (L3) | ICMP flood control; ping can be disabled |
| Game query & protocol floods | Application (L7) | Source, RakNet and SA-MP validators; A2S query caching |
| Connection exhaustion | Transport (L4) | Per-source connection limits for SSH, RDP, web, mail, MySQL |
Filtering in the same datacentre as your server.
Traditional scrubbing centres reroute your traffic across the internet, adding latency and a new point of failure. Glitch Guard steers traffic for a protected IP through the filtering layer inside the datacentre, then delivers clean traffic to your server over a separate internal path.
- Filtering happens in microseconds, not milliseconds
- Outbound traffic is never filtered or rate-limited
- Fail-open: if the filter is unavailable, traffic falls back to the direct path within seconds
DDoS mitigation for your whole stack.
DDoS mitigation FAQ
What is DDoS mitigation?
DDoS mitigation is the process of detecting a distributed denial-of-service attack and filtering the malicious traffic while allowing legitimate traffic through, so your service stays online during the attack.
What is the difference between DDoS protection and DDoS mitigation?
DDoS protection is the whole defensive setup, including prevention and hardening. DDoS mitigation is the active response during an attack: detecting it, scrubbing the bad traffic and delivering the clean traffic.
How fast does Glitch Guard mitigate an attack?
Volumetric attacks are detected and mitigated in under a second using inline mitigation on Tier 1 transit. Packet-level XDP filtering on protected IPs operates continuously in microseconds.
What is DDoS scrubbing?
DDoS scrubbing means inspecting traffic and removing malicious packets so only clean traffic is forwarded to the origin server. Glitch Guard scrubs traffic in the same datacentre as your server, so there is no long detour.
Does DDoS mitigation null-route my IP?
Not with Glitch Guard. Traffic is mitigated in line without null-routing or redirecting your traffic, so your server stays reachable during an attack.
Stop attacks before they reach your server.
Add Glitch Guard to a Glitch Servers VPS, dedicated server or game server and manage every rule from the client area.