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Poser - OFFICIAL F.A.Q (Last Updated: 2024 Dec 28 2:24 pm)
Subject: My freebies are DOWN
336 times, persistently making a new request every 15 seconds for about an hour and a half each time? I doubt it. They would have got the file way before that and the other downloads would have been cancelled. I'd be surprised if a download manager would behave like that, most webmasters would be up in arms pretty soon if a single file can generate so much bandwidth waste for a single user downloading it.
sorry, didn't mean to offend. The only time I ever saw something like that happen was decades ago, when someone set their modem to call some Evangalists' donation line every 30 seconds.
Saw an article in Wired last month about some sort of click fraud, where a competitor would ping their competition's Google ad every few seconds to run up their advertising costs..not as involved as this, but same principle. You might check with your email to see if anyone's been complaining (people will complain about anything even if only to complain there's nothing to complain about). It's probably not worth investigating on that line of questioning, but it's a possibility..
I wish I'd said that.. The Staircase Wit
anahl nathrak uth vas betude doth yel dyenvey..;)
wow! I'm sorry to hear that :( It definitly sounds fishy though.
"It is good to see ourselves as
others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we
are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not
angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to
say." - Ghandi
Attached Link: http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?forum_id=36&ShowMessage=147161
Seidr is a texture set for Fredrik's Freja character and clothing set for Aiko 3.Message edited on: 01/28/2006 14:40
"It is good to see ourselves as
others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we
are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not
angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to
say." - Ghandi
Arien, I thought of something that might help in the future. Instead of having a link leading directly to the download, have the link lead to another page with a picture of the item, and a link to the download there.
"It is good to see ourselves as
others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we
are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not
angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to
say." - Ghandi
This bulls** with deeplinking happens but it#s easy on apache servers to prevent people to do so. I had the same experience with a file of about 1 MB and I was astonished when I found that I had in one week about 1000 vistors and about 10.000 downloads of this file. I implemented a little .htaccess script and everybody who downloaded this file got only a small Gif that stated that the webmaster had stolen bandwidth from my website. His reaction in my Guestbook was really funny :D Sorry for your website, I loved your textures.
Ulli
"Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience!"
Acadia, the link from Rendo (and everywhere) was pointing to the download page, which is still available, btw. Jules: I take it you found that the file was being hotlinked somewhere else. I thought it might be the case with this, but then I expect I would see a referal from that site to my file in the logs, and all the IPs downloading it would be slightly different. What I have here is the same IP doing massive, repeated downloads of a single file. I have now implemented an .htaccess block to direct linking, so once the files come back up on february 1st, it will be more difficult to do it. I'm also looking at implementing a file download script that would keep an eye on this. Pakled: I'd posted an answer, but the server ate it. Basically, I'm not offended, just tired, cranky and dissillusioned, so I suspect not coming out in my best light atm. I had some R&R planned for today, and maybe a start onto a new texturing project. Instead, I've spent the whole day diving into server logs. You'd be cranky too after having to see so many lines of logs :)
I had a similar instance last year; 15,472 download requests in less than three hours, followed by 32,083 over a five hour period the following day, all for the same file from the same IP address. Fortunately it was a small file, but the site must have been virtually unusable while that was going on, and I never did find out what caused it. That IP still has the dubious distinction of being the only one barred from my site. Want to compare IPs? >:]
no problem..I spent many a year doing hardware repairs on servers, (currently working on the HP Server cert for that), so my expertice is probably in the wrong area. I do some print queue operations, so that's about as close as I get. Believe me, I know what it's like when the server goes down..so you have my sympathies..just wish I could help..take care, and good luck.
I wish I'd said that.. The Staircase Wit
anahl nathrak uth vas betude doth yel dyenvey..;)
Arien - I've had similar excessive traffic problems. These things happens every now and then. Nothing creepy. Main thing to ensure is your host doesn't charge for exceding your limit or it's really pricey, really quickly. You can use a series of mirrors, but maintenace/updates are awakward and if it's a popular freebie, all will soon run out of bandwidth. This is my solution.... Host a page on my main site. Stick all downloadable files on my ISP's freebie webspace only. On my main site it states clearly if you can't get a download mail me. If the mail is polite, I mail back with a pre-written mail and a link to a 'private' mirror. The URL of which is changed regulary to stop any bandwidth hassles on that. Note I say "If the mail is polite", thats because sadly some folks are not very pleasant when wanting a freebie. If I get an offensive one, they don't get a reply, and that address gets blocked by a spam filter. A lot of effort, time and money is spent by all freestuff creators giving stuff away. And sometimes I think a little respect is needed. Leeching for later use is fair-game but plain rudeness isn't.
Pinky - you left the lens cap of your mind on again.
So that's what happened to my last email that I sent ;) I guess "Gimme free item dammit!" isn't polite? Who knew, LOL
Message edited on: 01/28/2006 20:26
"It is good to see ourselves as
others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we
are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not
angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to
say." - Ghandi
I really don't know anything about bandwidth and such but do you think it is possible that the computer where the downloads start is infected by a trojan worm or something like that and that this virus could be the culprit?
France, Proud Owner of
KCTC Freebies
Hey Arien, I hope to Goddess that you get this figured out and that those responsible will pay in the hear and now. Karma's a bitch and I hope they get theirs. You are one of the most talented up and coming texture artists out there, in my opinion, and giving of your free time and talent with so much love and attention to detail should NOT be rewarded with such asinine behavior but as you say what a nutty world... the net.... et all..... Hope you get them sister! Blessings Richard ;-)~
---Wolff On The Prowl---
Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez?Form.Contrib=bcoleman&Topsectionid=0
In case anyone is interested, I have written a tool in PHP to help prevent this kind of problem. Arien already has it and is using it but I am making it available to **anyone** who wishes to use it.More stuff than you can keep track of? Try the free Poser Download Tracker.
Thank you very much. If I can figure out how it works, I'll certainly use it before something like this happens to me.
France, Proud Owner of
KCTC Freebies
Francemi: you basically install it and modify the configure file, letting it know the name of your downloads folder, which should be a difficult name to prevent hotlinking; you might also want to change the alloted number of downloads available. You then use download.php?=nameoffile.zip. as the link to your file. The script checks that the user hasn't burnt his allowance of downloads, and that the IP isn't banned; if everything is OK, it streams the download to the visitor. If not, it shows a 403 page. If you combine this with some changes in your .htaccess file, you should have a reasonably tight security against multiple downloads.
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Sadly, I have to let the community know that until the end of January, absolutely all my freebies are going to be offline. If there is anybody you want to thank for the freebies being taken offline, you can do so to the user who, according to the server logs, managed to download 246 copies of the Oriental Palace textures, and 180 copies of the Persian Princess, for a grand total of 1.2Gbs in around 2 hours, with requests coming constantly every 10 to 15 seconds. All without even visiting the page where I'm offering the files. Or the other person who apparently had the direct url of the files, and saw fit to download each 20 times in the space of 4 minutes. Or the other one that did something similar (all from the same ISP) that did the same for a grand total of 2.8 Gbs.
Strange world, the net.
This isn't an isolated incident either, it's happened before when I launched Seidr, some of it from very similar IPs, and it stopped as soon as I changed names for the files. It all makes me wonder exactly who could be so hellbent on doing this, and why. However, rest assured that I'm going through the server logs with a fine tooth comb, and any irregularity will be forwarded to the proper authorities. The monetary damage done for this hasn't been too great, but while I'm happy to donate my free time to give textures that I could be charging good money for, I can't afford to pay so that a group of childish people can play at being h4kk0rz and screw it up for the rest of the community. So for now, they win.
And btw, you can also thank them for taking up my time with solving server issues, instead of creating more stuff, which is what I was going to do today. Good going.
Freebies will be back in february, and I'll be keeping a close eye on the server stats. I'm already working with my server people, got the logs and will make sure to keep them at hand to verify things some more. I'm truly sorry for this, and I'll start working on ways to prevent it happening yet again in the future. Any ideas on the matter (aside from blocking IPs and preventing direct linking, which have already been implemented) will be appreciated. Also, if any other freebie creator has experience the same situation, I'd like to know. Feel free to IM me if you don't want to mention it publicly.
Message edited on: 01/28/2006 13:18
My store