My web logs are showing that some people leave WDL for hours/days at a time. Is there any chance you can add a timeout tag/flag that would allow the system to stop refreshing and display some type of “This session has been timed-out to prevent excessive bandwidth utilization” message?
The meta-refresh tag and javascript redirects can be disabled… I would think a timeout built into WDL wouldn’t be defeatable.
Thanks for the consideration.
Dwain
That should be possible. Roughly what length of time were you thinking of? What would you wish to happen / be displayed, after that period of time? If the user refreshed their browser page the timer would be restarted though.
Julian
Hello dcoufal.
But in my case, it doesnt affect my bandwith. I send every 14 seconds an update to my website on my internet Access Provider computer.
If someone connects and forget to disconnect, it will not affect my bill.
The only person affected would be the person who is watchind my WDL page.
Maybe I miss something.
Many ISPs set limits on the amount of traffic sent from your web site and charge extra if you use more than that (or block your site when you run out of bandwidth).
The web server is inside my house - therefore, everyone that views my weather data (including WDL) effects my upstream bandwidth…
Anyway, why would anyone need to watch WDL for hours on end? More likely scenario: Someone finds it and says, “Oh, cool”. And leaves it running for several days… never looking at it again.
I was thinking the tag could be set to a number between 0 and [whatever]. “0” would never timeout. Any other # would determine the # of minutes before timeout.
I made a suggestion as to the message to be displayed in the first post. Honesty would be best: a “This session has been timed-out to prevent excessive bandwidth utilization” type of message.
Yes, I realize a refresh of the page would restart the timer. BUT, to do that, the person would have to be actively viewing the page. If that’s the case - fine. But, if they simply forgot it was running - why continue to update the display?
OK. dcoufal. Now I agree with you. Cheers. 
OK - now that’s settled - I’ll see if I can add it for the next version 
Julian
Sorry about my attitude this morning… bad morning. :redhotevil: (And, then I come home from work to find the torsion spring on my garage door went “boom” sometime while I was at work… :roll: Oh, well… having both garage door springs replaced tomorrow…why replace only one 45-year old spring, right?)
Anyway - I don’t mind anyone using WDL - that’s why I have it on the site. I have issues with people that abuse it.
Thanks Julian!
Dwain
So how much bandwidth is going to a user playing the flashmovie? (approx off course)
I update my WDL every 4 seconds and probably have plenty of bandwidth to spare, but it isn’t quite live yet so it would be nice to know
R*
Well it’s quite difficult to predict as it depends upon lots of variables - best thing to do is look at your webserver log files - but the clientraw.txt file is approx 500bytes so you could say that for a 5 second refresh rate one user would take 360kB/hour (very approx!) To put into context you could easily use this bandwidth viewing one web page.
Julian
To put 360kb/hr into context…if someone stayed connected to your WDL for a whole month they’d use approx 250MB of bandwidth. That’s also per user, i.e. 2 users for a whole month = 500MB. I know some UK ADSL accounts are capped at 1GB/month, so you could be using a fair amount of your bandwidth. Having said that, very few people would stay connected to your WDL 24 hours a day for a month!
[quote author=Softvark link=topic=8187.msg56478#msg56478 date=1110402852]
OK - now that’s settled - I’ll see if I can add it for the next version
Hmm… maybe you are a victim of your own success (so to speak)… Are these people all from the same IP address’s. If so and as your webserver is inside your house, maybe as a temp measure you could stop traffic from those addresses by your router or NAT (if you have either of course)…
You should have some sort of protection to avoid other sorts of abuse. People hijack machines visible to the net for all sorts of reasons.
Regards
That would be a nice option to have. I too an having hanger=oners on clear air days. When viewing website stats the bandwith can add up. I can block the ip but thats not the answer or thing I care to do, only as a last resort.
Yes, I can use ipchains or add deny x.x.x.x in the .htacces files on the server or deny via the router – but, neither is a nice alternative. The ip’s tend to be dial-up, so - those solutions only work until they redial… Plus, that involves checking the access logs every day and modifying the deny lists.
And, it’s not that I don’t want anyone to use it – I just don’t want them to stay connected for days. If you want to watch it - fine. Just don’t abuse it.
Next version will hopefully be released soon - just waiting to finish a major new feature which will be released at the same time.
Julian
We are all keeeping our eyes on the news box to see when the WDL version changes to 4.0!
A test subsequent to the preview you saw highlighted a significant problem that I’ve been working on for the last week or so. The fix requires the implementation of something that we’d discussed about adding in version 2, but this has brought the work forward much sooner than I wanted. I’ve got a lot of server coding to do to add the new facilities. It also means that most of the world will never see version 1!
You get more like Brian every day!
At least Brian gives us several versions of the same number, yours has been superceded even before release!!
Coming soon to a screen near you!
