WPAD.dat 404 error redirect

  • Resolved chrisfegan

    (@chrisfegan)


    7 years, 8 months ago

    I’m seeing a large number of 404 errors for a file called wpad.dat originating from IPs related to our company. From my research wpad.dat is used to auto detect proxy servers, usually within a corporate network, but we use a third party proxy provider and do not have the auto detect setting active within our default browser.
    I’ve opened investigation with our infrastructure team and also asked my host, but they don’t want to commit and answer.
    My question is, can I set up a 301 redirect for wpad.dat to my website root, without negatively affecting the WP site or putting additional executions on the server?

    Thanks,
    Chris

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    7 years, 8 months ago

    Moved to Fixing WordPress from Everything else WordPress.

    My question is, can I set up a 301 redirect for wpad.dat to my website root, without negatively affecting the WP site or putting additional executions on the server?

    You could but those 404’s are not having a negative effect on your site. Why do the 301? That’s not correct either. That file request can be ignored.

    Thread Starter chrisfegan

    (@chrisfegan)

    7 years, 8 months ago

    Thanks for the reply Jan, I see your point.

    I was concerned that the volume of requests would not only be having an effect on server executions/load, but on SEO. I thought that if I redirected to the main homepage it would be better, but if, as you say, the requests shouldn’t have a negative effect on the site then I will ignore them.

    Regards,
    Chris

    sewhappy58

    (@sewhappy58)

    7 years, 4 months ago

    I am having the same problem. I’m seeing lots of wpad.dat 404 and its coming from a known source. However, I had the problem you feared. My server kept crashing from server overload. I am not sure what to do about it.

    Thread Starter chrisfegan

    (@chrisfegan)

    7 years, 4 months ago

    After some investigation and another event of almost hitting my server limits I’ve found a solution. The requests, according to what I’ve read, tend to be generated because of mis-configured proxy detection on the visiting domain resulting in the attempt to load the wpad.dat file.

    I found that adding the following to .htaccess has stopped the requests in their tracks and reduced server executions to a level I would expect for the usual traffic levels.

    # BEGIN WPAD Block
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteRule ^wpad.dat$ – [forbidden,last]
    # END WPAD Block

    sewhappy58

    (@sewhappy58)

    7 years, 4 months ago

    Thank you. I will try that

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

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