/PLAYBOOK · 2026-08-02

DDoS High-Defense Integration in Practice: High-Defense IP Configuration and Protection

Walks through DDoS high-defense IP integration: forwarding rules, origin whitelist, scrubbing thresholds, and blackhole policy. Builds an availability layer against volumetric DDoS.

DDoS high-defense is the core control against volumetric DDoS. Using a high-defense IP product, this article covers instance purchase, forwarding rules, origin whitelist, and traffic-scrubbing verification for game, finance, and ecommerce services.

Scope

Service under volumetric DDoS (SYN Flood, UDP Flood, CC, etc.) with saturated bandwidth;
High-availability workloads (games, payments, live streaming) that must stay online;
Attack volume exceeds IDC protection; need cloud-scale scrubbing;
Need to hide origin IP without changing origin architecture.

Prerequisites

Cloud vendor account (generic high-defense IP product);
Origin servers and public IPs;
Domain and DNS admin access;
Known business ports (e.g. TCP 80/443) and max origin bandwidth.

Mechanism

DDoS high-defense uses traffic diversion and scrubbing: resolve the domain to the high-defense IP so attack traffic hits the high-defense cluster first. Scrubbing devices pull traffic via BGP, drop attack packets, then reinject and forward legitimate traffic to origin. When attack volume exceeds instance capacity, high-defense triggers blackhole: the victim IP is withdrawn from the network for a period so the attack cannot take down the DC network. Correct scrubbing thresholds, origin whitelist, and alerts are the integration keys.

Procedure

Step 1: Purchase and configure the high-defense IP instance

Buy an instance in the high-defense console. Pick protection capacity (e.g. peak 100Gbps, CC protection 100k QPS). Record the assigned high-defense IP.

Step 2: Configure forwarding rules

Open instance management, choose port forwarding / L4 forwarding, add rules:

Protocol: TCP;
Forwarding ports: 80, 443;
Origin ports: 80, 443 (match origin Nginx listen ports);
Origin address: origin IP;
Session persistence: on (required for long-lived connections).

Step 3: Configure origin IP whitelist

On origin firewall or cloud security group, allow only high-defense origin CIDRs; drop everything else:

`# Example using Linux iptables (origin CIDR as provided by the high-defense console)
iptables -A INPUT -s 10.0.0.0/24 -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j DROP
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 443 -j DROP
# Persist rules (Debian/Ubuntu)
iptables-save > /etc/iptables/rules.v4`

Also restrict SSH and other management-port sources so attackers cannot scan past the whitelist onto the origin management plane.

Step 4: Configure protection policy

In instance protection settings:

Scrubbing threshold: set trigger, e.g. 100Mbps or 30000pps;
Blackhole threshold: keep default (tied to instance capacity); enable blackhole alerts;
CC protection: enable CC engine; set per-IP QPS threshold (e.g. 2000QPS);
Protection template: use the normal-traffic template to reduce false positives on legitimate users.

Step 5: Switch DNS

Point the domain to the high-defense IP:

`# Before
helixcyber.ai A 1.2.3.4 (origin IP)
# After
helixcyber.ai A 122.10.20.30 (high-defense IP)`

If origin is multiple servers, keep using SLB as the origin address. After cutover, test public connectivity.

Verification

`# Check 1: confirm DNS points to the high-defense IP
dig helixcyber.ai +short

# Check 2: port connectivity
curl -I "https://helixcyber.ai/"

# Check 3: review high-defense console "traffic reports"
# Confirm origin is healthy, no abnormal scrubbing records, blackhole status is normal`

Off-peak, you can use tcpreplay or a load tester to simulate small attacks and check scrubbing/threshold behavior (caution in production).

FAQ

FAQ1: What is blackhole? Why does it trigger?

Blackhole: when attack volume exceeds instance protection capacity, the carrier temporarily blackholes the IP at the network layer (typically hours) to protect the backbone. During that window all traffic to that IP, including legitimate traffic, is dropped. Avoid it: pick capacity above historical attack peaks, set alerts, scale or fail over to a backup path near the threshold.

FAQ2: High-defense IP vs CDN? Can they be used together?

CDN is content acceleration and cache; it has basic anti-DDoS but limited capacity. High-defense IP is DDoS traffic scrubbing only; no cache. They can stack: domain → CDN (or WAF) → high-defense IP → origin. Extra hops add latency; trade off per workload.

Summary

DDoS high-defense integration moves public ingress from origin to a cloud scrubbing cluster. Three configs do the filtering: forwarding rules, origin whitelist, scrubbing thresholds. After cutover, watch traffic reports and blackhole alerts, and drill scale-out playbooks so availability holds under large attacks.