Download managers/accelerators
 

Hi. So here's an example of a seemingly popular download manager/accelerator making five requests for the PhpDig script.


1) xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx - - [25/Mar/2004:02:01:22 -0800] "GET /download.php?digfile=phpdig-1.8.0.zip HTTP/1.0" 302 0 "-" "DA x.x"

2) xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx - - [25/Mar/2004:02:01:38 -0800] "GET /scripts/phpdig-1.8.0.zip HTTP/1.0" 206 54968 "http://www.phpdig.net/download.php?digfile=phpdig-1.8.0.zip" "DA x.x"

3) xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx - - [25/Mar/2004:02:01:42 -0800] "GET /scripts/phpdig-1.8.0.zip HTTP/1.0" 206 54968 "http://www.phpdig.net/download.php?digfile=phpdig-1.8.0.zip" "DA x.x"

4) xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx - - [25/Mar/2004:02:02:12 -0800] "GET /scripts/phpdig-1.8.0.zip HTTP/1.0" 206 54970 "http://www.phpdig.net/download.php?digfile=phpdig-1.8.0.zip" "DA x.x"

5) xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx - - [25/Mar/2004:02:02:24 -0800] "GET /scripts/phpdig-1.8.0.zip HTTP/1.0" 200 219874 "http://www.phpdig.net/download.php?digfile=phpdig-1.8.0.zip" "DA x.x"


Now here's a breakdown of the bandwidth usage by said five requests:
So what does this mean?

It means that the five requests by said download manager/accelerator sucked 384780 bytes to grab the file, whereas the file is 219874 bytes.

This implies that said download manager/accelerator sucked ~75% more bandwidth than was necessary to grab said file.

Hmm!

Hmm not much of a download manager.

I wrote my own a couple of years ago, and my service calls went down by 80%.

I would not be without it now. to the point it is the first thing my customers download.

most of my files are > 3Meg so its is worthwhile


it goes like this

user clicks download link
small exe (~19K) is downloaded to their machine
it checks to see if manager is installed, if it is it hands the job over to the manager
if not the manager is installed and automatically picks up the job.

Much Much Much better then getting countless emails about corrupt or incomplete downloads.

also prevents users from downloading the same file 20 times

all in all :)