The next generation in bandwidth control

The Problems:
Growing problems for site webmasters has been excessive bandwidth usage by certain users, site rippers, and content sharing on sites like rapidshare. People will get a short term trial, rip your whole site, cancel and then put your content out where other people get it for free. Webmasters have been searching for a solution to these problems or a long time. While you want your users to be able to enjoy your site, some users with very high speed connections can now be seen using over 50 GB in a single day. The load placed on the server can also make the site very slow or even completely inaccessible to other users.
Proposed Solutions: (and why they're inadequate)

Limiting by bandwidth

Some webmasters have tried putting simple limits on users such as "you can't download more than 1 gigabyte on any given day", but this approach has caused as many problems as it has solved. If your set a limit of 1GB, for example, in order to let a user view several of your videos, that also means that the ripper is allowed to download ten thousand of your images before he's stopped for the day.

Limiting by file count

You can't limit based on the number of files requested, because with thumbnail pages having 40 thumbs on a page it's perfectly normal for the user to request 120 images in one minute. You can't limit based on html pages, because the ripper isn't going to request all that many html pages, he's just going to grab every single pic from each of your gallery pages. Besides you gallery page URL may well be something.cgi or something.php. How is the script to know whether .cgi or .php is an html page or image? Throttlebox instead tracks the number of FULL SIZED images and FULL SIZED videos or ZIP files that a user downloads.
The Solution: Throttlebox

Throttlebox monitors user activity to prevent ripping (slurping) and keep bandwidth and server load under control so that a few users don't cause your site to run up huge bandwidth bills and people can't download your wholesite during a trial, they have to convert in order to see all your content.

Through easy to use, configurable rules, users will be monitored and controlled, preventing them from abusing your bandwidth. You simply set certain hourly and daily limits for each of the file types that need to be controlled and Throttlebox will mathematically determine the number of downloads and bandwidth that should be allowed for various time periods, such as how much should be allowed in a three hour period and how much in a 48 hour period. As needed, Throttlebox will tell the user to wait a few seconds, a few minutes, or a few hours before downloading more in order to keep the site responding quickly for other users.


Features:
  • Rule Types
    • Linear
    • Basic
  • Administrative Reporting
    • by user: total bandwidth usage and total files retrieved
    • all usage: total bandwidth usage and total files retrieved (all users)
    • usage by file type, such as count and bandwidth of videos or images

Linear: In the Linear rule type, the webmaster sets per hour & per day limits. Throttlebox then intelligently determines what other limits should be, such as the 3 hour limit and 48 hour limit. This rule type is based on what we call the water-heater algorithm. A user is only allowed as much hot water as the tank will hold (hourly limit), yet as time passes, more water is heated. As that hot water is used, more is heated, etc. This prevents someone from downloading a full day's worth of content in a matter of minutes before they're blocked, while allowing them to use the site several times during the day as long as as their total usage is reasonable.

Basic: Not nearly as sophisticated as the Linear rule type, the Basic rule type is a very elementary, per-day limit. Using this rule type, a user is allowed so many megabytes per day, as specified by the webmaster, and only a certain number of full size files per day.

Administrative Reporting: In addition to reporting total using by user and total usage overall, each rule has a separate report so it's easy to see where abuse is taking place, and by whom. Reporting can also provide the webmaster with insight into rules that may need adjusting.

Defaults & Customization: Throttlebox comes with a default rule set including rules "all", "image" and "video". The webmaster can create custom rules or adjust existing rules by specifying or modifying the rule attributes, such as Rule Name, Type of Rule (Basic or Linear), the Extensions associated with the rule, the Minimum KB, MB allowed over time and Downloads allowed over time.
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© Morris 2007