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Preventing Mass Download?

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  • 15-10-2005 5:16pm
    #1
    Rollo Tamasi
    Registered Users Posts: 3,514 ✭✭✭


    Hello, valued board’s member!

    I'm a bit concerned at the moment about users mass downloading from my site and unnecessarily using up my valuable bandwidth. As ye already know download mangers such as flashgot can be used to "grab the lot" from your website, which can be good but is causing me some concerns.

    I have a website full of 80mb to 100mb mp3 music mixes and I would like to have control and regulate the downloads without putting in place a registered/ members only type area.

    Is it possible to prevent mass downloading or am I asking too much?


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    #2
    optiplexgx270
    Registered Users Posts: 2,502 ✭✭✭optiplexgx270


    If you are technical you could code the page to record the ip address of the client and limit downloads for that ip to say 5 files a day by recording the ip into a database table and doing a count on the number of entries in the table for that ip and have a job running to truncate the table each night.


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    #3
    dahamsta
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 16,659 ✭✭✭✭dahamsta


    You need to define your parameters first Rollo. How do you want to regulate the downloads? Per meg, per file, per day, per month? What are the limits? Etc etc. Have a think about that and optiplex's comments.


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    #4
    Karoma
    Registered Users Posts: 19,396 ✭✭✭✭Karoma


    What http server are you using?
    Using FTP to serve up files also?


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    #5
    K!LL!@N
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,819 ✭✭✭K!LL!@N


    Host them as torrents maybe?
    If you've got a decent community going, this could work really well.

    Killian


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    #6
    rsynnott
    Registered Users Posts: 4,003 ✭✭✭rsynnott


    You can do this trivially with a cookie. Make the files directly inaccessible, all links go to 'download.php?file=blah' or whatever. Set cookie giving date you're mesuring from and user's aggregate bandwidth usage, and update as appropriate.

    The user can get round this, but most won't.


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    #7
    Rollo Tamasi
    Registered Users Posts: 3,514 ✭✭✭Rollo Tamasi


    @ K!LL!@N - i don't think i can really use torrents. That would kinda deter people too much! Altough i understand where you are coming from.

    @ Karoma - its apache, and yup i'm using ftp to load up the files

    @ optiplexgx270 & rsynnott - yeah, i'll probably need to introduce a management system either via ip or cookies to monitor downloads. I'd imagine that cookies would be the easier option....

    @ Ken Shabby - per file would probably be the most suited to my needs

    thanks for the help lads. I'll have to ponder if i want to introduce this kinda system, i'm monitoring my bandwidth dailly thru my cpanel, so if i see i'm nearly hitting the bandwidth limit i will have to introduce counter-measures.


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    #8
    rsynnott
    Registered Users Posts: 4,003 ✭✭✭rsynnott


    Per IP is a bad idea, because in many cases (universities, large companies, AOL etc.) thousands of computers may share one IP address.


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    #9
    K!LL!@N
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,819 ✭✭✭K!LL!@N


    I don't care what you use in the end makes no difference to me but have you actually tried torrents?

    Why would it deter users?
    Often times it's faster to download from a torrent than a direct download.
    Especially if the servers that are delivering the direct content are under pressure.

    Your downloads seem to be popular( otherwise you wouldn't be worried about your bandwidth ), so you obviously have regular users to the site.
    All you would need to do would be to seed a couple of full copies of the file and when others join the torrent they'll be downloading from each other and the load will be taken off of you, you could even throttle back your seeding if the speed of the torrent is above a certain level.
    This can, and does, work really well.

    If your downloaders are computer savy in any way and they find out you're blocking them by cookie, they'll simply delete it.
    If you limit by ip, in most cases they can simply reconnect with a new ip.

    To my mind, no one has suggested a better method than torrents.
    If i was given the option of limited downloads or download everything from torrents, i'd pick the torrents.
    People don't like limits and they'll do everything they can to get around them.

    Anyway good luck with whichever route you choose.

    Killian


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    #10
    Rollo Tamasi
    Registered Users Posts: 3,514 ✭✭✭Rollo Tamasi


    I'm aware of the use of torrents and have used them, legally for downloading linux iso's of course!

    But many potential users will be firewalled. Plus not everyone on the net is tech savy enough to know what a torrent file is. You would have to introduce users to a new technology, get them to download a third party program (bit tornado or something) and show them how to use it and hope that there is enough seeds out there to present them with a healthy download. And the users of the torrent files would have to donate their own bandwidth to my cause (i.e. the download/upload process that is involved in torrents). Its an unnesecary barrier imo to download a simple mp3 file.

    rsynnott, thats why i think the cookie option is probably the best bet. Thanks


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