Just like fail2ban is not very useful against a DDOS attack where each unique IP only makes a few requests with a large (hour+) delay in between requests. There is no clear "fail" in these requests, and the fail2ban database becomes huge and far too slow.
- 400,000 Unique IP addresses
- 1 to 3 requests per hour per IP addresses - with delays of over 60 minutes between each request.
- Legit request URLs, legit UA & referrer
Maybe Anubis would help, but it's also a risk for various reasons.