KDE's https://autoconfig.kde.org/ocs/providers.xml server started getting an extremely high number of requests recently. It began to impact other services. See https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-core-devel/2021-September/091459.html for details.

We pushed some fixes for this already:

• Load categories only once, not many times: https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/attica/-/merge_requests/15 (Fixed in Frameworks 5.87)
• Include user agent on queries so we get a better idea of who's to blame when an IP is sending too many requests: https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/knewstuff/-/merge_requests/142 (Fixed in Frameworks 5.87)

I have contacted distros and asked them to backport these fixes.

This task will track any further improvements that are required.