SUPPORT FOR WEBMASTERS

Given the widespread use of PaqRat that we are expecting and the automated nature of the program, many of you webmasters may be worried about the potential bandwidth drain on your web servers.  This is true especially if you understand the growth of personal broadband connections.  In short, the bandwidth going to homes is growing much faster than the bandwidth allocated to servers.  Only a few broadband PaqRats all hitting the same website at the same time could quickly bring that server to its knees.

Live Throttling™

We've improved webmasters ability to control PaqRat's bandwith usage by providing a domain level control to manage it.  The Live Throttling™ control allows you to specify a maximum bandwidth that PaqRat can use.  PaqRat monitors how much data it is downloading and will "throttle down" it's consumption to as low as 128Kbps.  Why 128?  Basically, anyone with a 28.8Kbps or 56Kbps modem or ISDN is already limited to a speed of equal or lesser value.  But for those users that have cable modems or DSL that potential 1.5Mbps pipe can be just a bit too fat.  We think that the 128Kbps bound is pretty reasonable.

Live Throttling™ is an improvement over our previous attempt at supporting this feature in two ways.  First, the throttle control is now in the webmasters hands instead of being arbitrarily set by us.  The second is that the throttle now keeps downloading a "steady stream" instead of allowing it to "burst".  Bandwidth consumption by PaqRat used to go in a sequence of spikes as images were downloaded but now provides a smooth continuous data stream which is much healthier for your webservers :)

To implement this feature on your website, just download ("Save target As") the "PaqRatThrottle.txt" file (below) and place it in the root directory of your domain (e.g. http://www.paqrat.com).  PaqRat will look for the file in that location and, if found, will read the value that you have set in the BANDWITHTHROTTLE parameter.  PaqRat will use this value as it's cap for all downloads.

PaqRatThrottle.txt

This is just another way that PaqRat tries to be a good citizen on the Net.  If you have any questions about this feature, please contact us.

We believe this represents a good compromise between the insatiable appetite for downloads and bandwidth that today's consumers have and the cost and load limitations that web server operators find themselves burdened with.

ServerSaver™ (This feature was superceded by Live Throttling in version 1.0.6)

Enter ServerSaver!  PaqRat basically monitors how fast binaries are being downloaded and limits them so that only one image or sound is downloaded every three seconds.  If a PaqRat user is using a slow modem, the image will take longer than 3 seconds to load anyway, so from the webserver's perspective their PaqRat will download continuously at a slow trickle.  However, if an image loads in under 3 seconds, PaqRat waits idle until 3 seconds have gone by before another image download is initiated.  This delay feature means that high bandwidth connections will have "bursts" of demand on the web server, but will not occupy the whole pipe.  Bandwidth demand from that high-bandwidth user will look like a heartbeat monitor, with spikes every 3 seconds and flat periods in between.