Re: Defenses against bad robots

Steve Jones (stevej@halcyon.com)
Sun, 19 May 1996 18:21:42 -0700


At 01:04 PM 5/17/96 PDT, you wrote:

>I welcome your frank criticisms and flames about these
>techniques.
>[...]
>(E) Trap the robot into retrieving "a gigabyte-size HTML
>document generated on-the-fly" (1). Please reply with
>examples of this technique.

Instead of sending volumes of data that use network bandwidth
that could alternatively be used for productive work, maybe
delaying responses could keep such a robot occupied waiting
for them. The brute-force voluminous data approach is fine for
today, but in years to come such a use of network bandwidth
might be viewed with the same distaste as off-topic junk mail.

I'm curious if anyone knows a practical amount of time after
submitting a request before such a robot gives up and decides
that the "target" is not responding.

Steve Jones
GENERAL SOFTWARE, INC.