DDOS and other nasties

[DavidJ]

I learned that DDOS attacked eats up the resources of the server and that would make my server real slow. Will it also damage something in the server other than slowing it down? How could I totally protect my server from this kind of attacks? What are the common causes of these attacks anyway?

[webnubie]

I don't know if it will also create problems other than consuming your server resources. But it will sometimes consume the bandwidth of a router between the Internet and the LAN, so that it dangers the entire network.

So far DDOS can be prevented via proactive testing, using test platform such as Test platforms like Mu Dynamics' Service Analyzer.