Download issues

[GoPadge]

I have a new install of TextPad from a new employer, who has not used TextPad in the past. I was able to download the installer, and was going through the Addons opening new tabs for the 13 items I was interested in. Once I had the tabs open, I went to view them and found the verification screen. I was able to refresh and download 5 addons, but after that I started getting the "HTTP Error 429: You have reached your download limit." error message. I understand from a post back in 2013 that this has been an issue before. (Though I will grant that this was one of only two posts that include the You have reached your download limit text.)

I understand the issue of trying to cut your bandwidth costs, and maybe the issue crops up so rarely that developing a different solution isn't feasible. But is there any way of finding out how long I'm going to have to wait to down load the syntax files I need?

[AmigoJack]

was going through the Addons opening new tabs for the 13 items I was interested in

How is that even possible? TextPad offers 4 Addon categories and from there you only get the downloads directly - I'm not aware of one single addon having its own page to be opened in a new browser tab. So you just opened 13 tabs of what should have been a download already, to then meet the verification step.

I could reproduce this, being able to download 6 (syntax) files to then get HTTP 429 as response. The 6 files size 25,6 KiB (26'313 bytes), so I guess the threshold are simply 25 KiB. That's awful low, yes, and I have no clue if there's even one addon that sizes more than 50 KiB that would stress the HTTP server in sum, should one want to download all addons in a row.

I understand from a post back in 2013 that this has been an issue before.

While there are many ways to implement a block better (one way would be to check if the requester has a running phpBB session; another would be temporarily ban an IP address for too many downloads in a row, increasing the time span exponentially should still download attempts be made before the time span is over...) I have one suggestion that could be implemented quite easily:

• Create a new forum (not an entire board) where only registered users have access to. Not guests, not bots.
• Make one or a few topics that have attachments which could then be downloaded by members without any restriction. This way, (chinese) guests wouldn't be able to do so.
• I guess all the addons barely get new contributions these days anymore, so A-F of all syntax files could be zipped in one archive, forming one attachment to be available for download. And so on.
• Bonus: it will automatically create statistics on how many downloads were made.

[bbadmin]

For many years now, attempts to repeatedly download files from our server, all day, every day, from hundreds of IP addresses have continued. We've implemented various heuristics to block this, culminating in the recent requirement to pass a "not a robot" test. That has proven to be effective for now, so we'll experiment with relaxing some of the download limits. Apologies for any inconvenience to our customers.

If you have any idea why all this moronic downloading goes on, please let us know. I assume it's not just our website being picked on, so I wonder how much Internet bandwidth is being wasted in this way?

[GoPadge]

I was going to say, that I was able to download an additional 6 syntax files today. And this time I focused on the ones I most wanted. It's not a big deal, I can deal with this method. I only have two more syntax files I want at this point, so I should be able to finish tomorrow.

It is annoying that you have to use such methods to deal with bots, but I recognize that it is a fact of life for a small software company, and one that I am more than willing to deal with for such a great product!

[Davidmenk3]

I could reproduce this, being able to download 6 (syntax) files to then get HTTP 429 as response. The 6 files size 25,6 KiB (26'313 bytes), so I guess the threshold are simply 25 KiB. That's awful low, yes, and I have no clue if there's even one addon that sizes more than 50 KiB that would stress the HTTP server in sum, should one want to download all addons in a row.

I can reproduce the issue where downloading 6 files (totaling 25.6 KiB) results in an HTTP 429 response. The low threshold of around 25 KiB seems inadequate, especially considering many addons are larger than 50 KiB. If you need a solution, consider getting a cheap virtual server from HostNoc to help manage your downloads and server load effectively.

[bbadmin]

The limit is on the number of files you can download per day, rather than their size. Unfortunately, this is needed because there are hundreds of IP addresses attempting to download everything, over and over again, all day, every day. If anybody knows why they do this, please let me know.

Apologies for any inconvenience this causes.