The LSID framework has provision for basic security (HTTP credentials), so this could be used for identifying end users and controlling the degree of their activity. Kevin

...

...

Roger Hyam roger@tdwg.org 19/06/2006 9:30 p.m. >>>

I think the only way to throttle in these situations is to have some notion of who the client is and the only way to do that is to have some kind of token exchange over HTTP saying who they are. Basically you have to have some kind of client registration system or you can never distinguish between a call from a new client and a repeat call. The use of IP address is a pain because so many people are now behind some kind of NAT gateway.

How about this for a plan:

You could give a degraded services to people who don't pass a token (a 5 second delay perhaps) and offer a quicker service to registered users who pass a token (but then perhaps limit the number of calls they make). This would mean you could offer a universal service even to those with naive client software but a better service to those who play nicely. You could also get better stats on who is using the service.

So there are ways that this could be done. I expect people will come up with a host of different ways. It is outside LSIDs though.

Roger

Sally Hinchcliffe wrote: It's not an LSID issue per se, but LSIDs will make it harder to slow searches down. For instance, Google restricts use of its spell checker to 1000 a day by use of a key which is passed in with each request. Obviously this can't be done with LSIDs as then they wouldn't be the same for each user.The other reason why it's relevant to LSIDs is simply that providing a list of all relevant IPNI LSIDs (not necessary to the LSID implementation but a nice to have for caching / lookups for other systems using our LSIDs) also makes life easier for the datascrapers to operateAlso I thought ... here's a list full of clever people perhaps they will have some suggestions Sally Is this an LSID issue? LSIDs essential provide a binding service between an name and one or more web services (we default to HTTP GET bindings). It isn't really up to the LSID authority to administer any policies regarding the web service but simply to point at it. It is up to the web service to do things like throttling, authentication and authorization.Imagine, for example, that the different services had different policies. It may be reasonable not to restrict the getMetadata() calls but to restrict the getData() calls.The use of LSIDs does not create any new problems that weren't there with web page scraping - or scraping of any other web service.Just my thoughts...RogerRicardo Scachetti Pereira wrote: Sally, You raised a really important issue that we had not really addressed at the meeting. Thanks for that. I would say that we should not constrain the resolution of LSIDs if we expect our LSID infrastructure to work. LSIDs will be the basis of our architecture so we better have good support for that. However, that is sure a limiting factor. Also server efficiency will likely vary quite a lot, depending on underlying system optimizations and all. So I think that the solution for this problem is in caching LSID responses on the server LSID stack. Basically, after resolving an LSID once, your server should be able to resolve it again and again really quickly, until something on the metadata that is related to that id changes. I haven't looked at this aspect of the LSID software stack, but maybe others can say something about it. In any case I'll do some research on it and get back to you. Again, thanks for bringing it up. Cheers,RicardoSally Hinchcliffe wrote: There are enough discontinuities in IPNI ids that 1,2,3 would quickly run into the sand. I agree it's not a new problem - I just hate to think I'm making life easier for the data scrapersSally It can be a problem but I'm not sure if there is a simple solution ... and how different is the LSID crawler scenario from an http://www.ipni.org/ipni/plantsearch?id= 1,2,3,4,5 ... 9999999 scenario?Paul-----Original Message-----From: tdwg-guid-bounces@mailman.nhm.ku.edu[mailto:tdwg-guid-bounces@mailman.nhm.ku.edu]On Behalf Of SallyHinchcliffeSent: 15 June 2006 12:08To: tdwg-guid@mailman.nhm.ku.eduSubject: [Tdwg-guid] Throttling searches [ Scanned for viruses ]Hi allanother question that has come up here. As discussed at the meeting, we're thinking of providing a complete download of all IPNI LSIDs plus a label (name and author, probably) which will be available as an annually produced downloadMost people will play nice and just resolve one or two LSIDs as required, but by providing a complete list, we're making it very easy for someone to write a crawler that hits every LSID in turn and basically brings our server to its kneesAnybody know of a good way of enforcing more polite behaviour? We can make the download only available under a data supply agreement that includes a clause limiting hit rates, or we could limit by IP address (but this would ultimately block out services like Rod's simple resolver). I beleive Google's spell checker uses a key which has to be passed in as part of the query - obviously we can't do that with LSIDsAny thoughts? Anyone think this is a problem? Sally*** Sally Hinchcliffe*** Computer section, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew*** tel: +44 (0)20 8332 5708*** S.Hinchcliffe@rbgkew.org.uk_______________________________________________TDWG-GUID mailing listTDWG-GUID@mailman.nhm.ku.eduhttp://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-guid________________________... mailing listTDWG-GUID@mailman.nhm.ku.eduhttp://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-guid *** Sally Hinchcliffe*** Computer section, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew*** tel: +44 (0)20 8332 5708*** S.Hinchcliffe@rbgkew.org.uk_______________________________________________TDWG-GUID mailing listTDWG-GUID@mailman.nhm.ku.eduhttp://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-guid _______________________________________________TDWG-GUID mailing listTDWG-GUID@mailman.nhm.ku.eduhttp://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-guid -- ------------------------------------- Roger Hyam Technical Architect Taxonomic Databases Working Group------------------------------------- http://www.tdwg.org roger@tdwg.org +44 1578 722782------------------------------------- *** Sally Hinchcliffe*** Computer section, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew*** tel: +44 (0)20 8332 5708*** S.Hinchcliffe@rbgkew.org.uk

-- ------------------------------------- Roger Hyam Technical Architect Taxonomic Databases Working Group------------------------------------- http://www.tdwg.org roger@tdwg.org +44 1578 722782-------------------------------------

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