wondering if anyone can help...[bandwidth limiting]

Pwolf · Post by **Pwolf** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 11:05 am

mods please move this if it's in the wrong forum.

i think i have a problem. I just got new hosting as my old hosting closed down early august. Yesterday the site had only used 2gb of bandwidth. when i woke up, my host contacted me and said it used 63gb! wf?! i know i'm not that popular. I checked the stats and it shows that the videos have been downloaded A LOT.

i'm pretty sure something is wrong here, anyone have any ideas how i can figure out whats going on, and also anyone have suggestions as to how i can first, remove offsite linking, and second, only allow clients to be able to download 2 things at once.

Pwolf

Herbert West · Post by **Herbert West** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 11:09 am

You can check your logfiles, if you have access to them (depends on provider), there you can see if all downloads came from the same ip and what browser id was used. Doesn't help much fpr figuring out what what happened but a little more info is always helpfull.

Chaos Angel · Post by **Chaos Angel** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 11:16 am

Is it possible that some people downloaded the videos more than once? Maybe limit the number of downloads per IP address?

Probably not a good idea, but it's all I can think of offhand...

Pwolf · Post by **Pwolf** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 12:32 pm

Chaos Angel wrote:Is it possible that some people downloaded the videos more than once? Maybe limit the number of downloads per IP address?

Probably not a good idea, but it's all I can think of offhand...

actually, thats what i want to do. i want to limit it to 2 downloads at a time per ip. i'm at school right now but when i before i left i checked the sites stats page and there were several addresses that did the majority of the downloads... a few of them were from the hostingmatrix.com domain.

anyway, back on the subject. i don't know how to limit it. if anyone can give me information on how to do that, please tell me. i'll try contacting my host when i get home also and see if they can help with that also.

Pwolf

Herbert West · Post by **Herbert West** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 1:43 pm

Pwolf wrote:anyway, back on the subject. i don't know how to limit it. if anyone can give me information on how to do that, please tell me. i'll try contacting my host when i get home also and see if they can help with that also.

I have seen that you use php on your site, you can serve the videos through a little php script that stops after x downloads/bytes a month, shouldn't be too difficult to implement.

Pwolf · Post by **Pwolf** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 2:13 pm

hmm, thats a good idea... i'll look into that after i get home. unfortionatly... that wont stop direct downloading as you can bypass the scrpt if you know the direct link.

Pwolf

Herbert West · Post by **Herbert West** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 2:19 pm

Pwolf wrote:hmm, thats a good idea... i'll look into that after i get home. unfortionatly... that wont stop direct downloading as you can bypass the scrpt if you know the direct link.

The direct link won't be available to the public if the file is directly returned through the script.

Pwolf · Post by **Pwolf** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 4:28 pm

Herbert West wrote:
Pwolf wrote:hmm, thats a good idea... i'll look into that after i get home. unfortionatly... that wont stop direct downloading as you can bypass the scrpt if you know the direct link.
The direct link won't be available to the public if the file is directly returned through the script.

I checked the logs about an hour ago and apparently the same addresses tried downloading files that weren't even uploaded yet. but they knew the file names and where they were going to be. fucking crazy.

Pwolf

badmartialarts · Post by **badmartialarts** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 5:01 pm

That's weird sounding, like there's some sort of stalker for your videos or something. Or the reverse: someone who's trying to slam your bandwidth... Got any enemies?

Pwolf · Post by **Pwolf** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 5:28 pm

Sousaphonist wrote:That's weird sounding, like there's some sort of stalker for your videos or something. Or the reverse: someone who's trying to slam your bandwidth... Got any enemies?

umm not that i know of...

Pwolf