Title: IP Block didn&#8217;t work
Last modified: December 12, 2017

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# IP Block didn’t work

 *  Resolved [BobIsRight](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bobisright/)
 * (@bobisright)
 * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ip-block-didnt-work/)
 * My web site got hit with a lot of traffic to xmlrpc.php from a single IP address.
   It maxed the CPU repeatedly. When I went to the WordFence live traffic page, 
   I could see the calls coming through. I clicked the button “Block This IP”, but
   the hits kept coming through. I saw them in red on the live traffic page, supposedly
   blocked, but the CPU didn’t drop. I waited a few minutes, but that didn’t help.
   I finally blocked using .htaccess.
 * So, it looked like something happened when I clicked the “Block this IP” button,
   but stopping the traffic isn’t what happened.
 * The page I need help with: _[[log in](https://login.wordpress.org/?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwordpress.org%2Fsupport%2Ftopic%2Fip-block-didnt-work%2F%3Foutput_format%3Dmd&locale=en_US)
   to see the link]_

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

 *  [bluebearmedia](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bluebearmedia/)
 * (@bluebearmedia)
 * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ip-block-didnt-work/#post-9775211)
 * Wordfence can’t stop the traffic TO your site, it can only block access to your
   site’s pages. To block traffic outright from even getting to your site, you’d
   have to block it at the hosting/server level.
 *  [wfalaa](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wfalaa/)
 * (@wfalaa)
 * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ip-block-didnt-work/#post-9778217)
 * Hi [@bobisright](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bobisright/)
    What bluebearmedia
   mentioned is correct, the plugin can only block/throttle requests once they reached
   your server, you can control that in “[Rate Limiting Rules](https://docs.wordfence.com/en/Wordfence_options#Rate_Limiting_Rules)“,
   however, blocking these requests at a higher level on your server might be helpful
   in your case.
 * Thanks.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

The topic ‘IP Block didn’t work’ is closed to new replies.

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 * 2 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [wfalaa](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wfalaa/)
 * Last activity: [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ip-block-didnt-work/#post-9778217)
 * Status: resolved