[comp.admin.policy] Controlling anonymous ftp volumes.

russell@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Russell J Fulton;ccc032u) (05/28/91)

We have an anonymous ftp archive of mac, msdos and some other material. We
set it up mainly for use of people within New Zealand to save traffic on
our international link as lots of people download the latest version of
4DOS or whatever from SIMTEL. Our problem is that we are now getting traffic
from all over the world! Our connection to the rest of you is via an expensive
satellite link on which we pay for *all* the traffic. 

I have put up a README file which gets displayed on anonymous logins asking
people from outside New Zealand to use archive sites nearer to home and this
has cut traffic by about half but we are still getting quite a few people
ignoring it. 

We could simply lock out access on our router but we don't want to be that
drastic. What I currently intend to do is patch ftpd to introduce delays
into international traffic so that transfers will be slow and put a message
to that effect in the README file.

I am interested in other's opinions on the best way to tackle this problem and
also in any pointers as to the best way introduce delays into the transfer.
(My first attempt will be to put a sleep into the loop for every 1000 chars.)

Thanks Russell.

-- 
Russell Fulton, Computer Center, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
<rj_fulton@aukuni.ac.nz>