Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks flood websites with malicious traffic, making them inaccessible. Hosting providers use several key methods to protect your site from these threats.

First, traffic filtering analyzes incoming data. Legitimate requests are allowed through, while suspicious traffic is blocked at the network edge. This is often done with specialized hardware or cloud-based services.

Second, rate limiting controls how many requests a single IP address can send. This prevents one source from overwhelming your server.

Many providers also use:

• Anycast Network Diffusion: This spreads attack traffic across multiple data centers, diluting its impact.
• Web Application Firewalls (WAFs): These filter out malicious web traffic before it reaches your site.
• Traffic Scrubbing Centers: All traffic is routed through a "clean" center where attacks are filtered out.

For the best protection, choose a hosting plan with built-in DDoS mitigation. This service is always active, monitoring traffic 24/7 to identify and stop attacks automatically, keeping your website online and secure.