I self host all of my services but utilize a VPS as a gateway for access. Primarily to allow access to a media server and file storage for friends and family.

Recently I’ve been shut down by my VPS provider on multiple occasions because they claim my server was DDoS’d at 2gigabits/s. I don’t see any evidence of this in my logs.

Regardless, I set up Traefik proxy to geoblock any IPs outside of my country. Literally a few mins after doing so and confirming via VPN that it was working I got shut down and received an email that my network was severed temporarily due to a DDoS Blackhole event.

The questionable nature of their detection system aside, it’s got me wondering…does ip blocking actually help mitigate DDoS attacks?

The server still needs to process the incoming connection before it filters it, so I’m assuming the attack is still accomplishing it’s intent which is to overload the server. Can somebody more knowledgeable provide some insight?