[hackerspaces] SpaceAPI being polled fast

[ToM]

Le 30/10/2012 06:01, Eric Stein a écrit :
> Since when is 25 seconds too much?

"Fast", not "too much". I expressed our preference to not be polled that
often, for several reasons.


The main one is, I think it makes no sense for us. We don't move from a
location to another that often, we don't spend the whole day to open
then close then open the door again, we have quite a stable contact
address, etc.

The only field that could potentially be updated more than once a minute
would be the sensors one, and I don't think anyone is monitoring our
space that closely - I personally don't.

On a side note, we don't even have sensors.


Another reason is, the poll fills our web server logs.

Not that we are that short on disk space, but we have quite a low
traffic, now consider these numbers:

  Current access.log     5518 lines     100.00%
  Quick Polling Bot      3207 lines      58.00%
  Other status.json        22 lines       0.39%

Fuck, our main follower is a bot :( (and he didn't pay his member fee)

Consider a web server with some statistics setup, such as AWStats or any
Webalizer-like tool. From the moment the bot was started, one would have
to tweak his setup to discard the polling bot.

On a side note, we don't do web statistic (and we have no member fee
either, our space is free as in any meaning you would think of).


Anyway, to put it the other side, what would be the use of such a quick
poll? Why would a space directory want to be aware of any changes in the
last twenty five seconds? Am I the only one to find that delay a bit
excessive?



> The responses are small, this is not a big deal.

Even my microwave could handle such a load. In fact, the overload is on
the poll bot's side, but one is free to spend his resources as he wants.

To be honest, I don't really care. It started on August, 24 2012 and I
noticed it a few days ago only. Consider this topic as a notice, and a
pretext to joke about the intertubes being filled by anonymous Amazon
instances. Oh wait!

Actually the problem-not-being-a-real-problem is easily solved by moving
the status.json resource to its own subdomain.


Out of the quick polling point, this bot is a bad boy and doesn't tell
who it is - no user-agent. This is not mandatory, since the RFC says
this is a SHOULD and not a MUST [1], but still, that would be nice from
the bot to identity itself.

  https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-14.43



> Just FYI it is not me doing it.

ACK, calling back our Emergency Counter Assault Team.


-- 
ToM