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Download Extension: Traffic Management [EN]

Verfasst: Sa 20. Aug 2022, 10:43
von oxpus
There are several settings to set up traffic for downloading or uploading files.

By default, traffic management is enabled to limit the server load.
Historically, this function comes from times when only a certain traffic was offered free of charge by your own provider.
This is usually no longer the case, but it may be useful to allow only a certain amount of traffic in order not to permanently strain the bandwidth of the individual web presence.

First of all, the entire traffic management system can be switched off.
This is done in the ACP (like all other options mentioned below) in the "General configuration" module with activation of the option "Switch traffic management off:."
As of this moment, no traffic restrictions will be applied and files can be downloaded and uploaded unlimited with the extension.

If, on the other hand, you want to restrict traffic, there are several options in the "General configuration" under the page "Traffic" (selectable via the drop down at the top right) to basically set up the traffic in the extension.
The most important settings here are the options "Traffic for registered users for all files per month:" and "Traffic for guests for all files per month:."
These options limit the total traffic for the respective user group independently of the auto-traffic set up for individual groups (more on this below).
Once the limit set here is reached, you can increase it manually or wait until the next month to get a new traffic limit.
If you do not want to change these limits, the limit should be set correspondingly high according to the provided files.
Note:
There is no option in the extension to bypass these two limits, except to completely shut down the traffic management!

Another option to provide users with more traffic is the option "Debit user traffic only once per download:."
This only counts the traffic of downloads once, so the user can download a download as often as desired.
This is also the only way to bypass the limited total traffic, but this only applies to already downloaded files.

For all other options in the area "Traffic" in the "General configuration" have short help texts, which are explained via the question mark in red at the right edge.
The "Online Help" is also available for all standard options when editing downloads.

In order for users to receive traffic at all, the option "Delay auto traffic for new User:" must first be adapted to their own needs.
This option determines how many days a user can get automatically distributed traffic at all.
By default, this is set to 30 days (this applies to all users from the installation of the extension) and can be deactivated with "0."

In order to finally allocate traffic to the users, the respective settings must be made in the ACP module "Traffic Management."
There you set in the tab "Auto Traffic" which user group at the beginning of the month how much traffic should automatically receive.
The limits set here are automatically assigned to the members of the displayed user groups at each start of the month.
In this case, the existing traffic is not added up, but only the traffic limit is replenished up to the set value.
Note:
No traffic should be allocated to guests via the user group "Guests," as the traffic allocation made via this cannot be guaranteed without errors.
For this purpose, the option "Users without a membership in a user group" is available to assign traffic to all users without group assignment (i.e. also guests).
And the overall traffic limit for guests (see above) also applies to all downloads from undeclared users.

In the module "Traffic Management" you can also assign traffic specifically to all, individual or users of a group in the tabs "All Users," "One User" and "Group Members."
This is done with the respective option "Add" as additional traffic to the existing limit or by "Set" as a total traffic, inevitable of the currently existing limit.
Note:
If traffic is set to 0 via one of these additional tabs with the option "Set," the relevant user is completely deprived of traffic for the rest of the current month.
For example, this can be helpful for locked users to temporarily deprive them of the ability to download files.
Alternatively, however, the traffic allocation via a new user group would be more advisable, since the traffic is otherwise replenished every beginning of the month.

Addition of the general traffic management you can limit the download traffic on each download category, too.
If a limit has been entered in a category, users can only download files in this category up to this limit.

Note on automatic traffic per month:
The extension automatically replenishes all traffic limits for the set user groups on the first day of the month.
Depending on the use of the forum's cron functions, this happens either with the first call of the forum in the month or through an established cronjob, which automatically runs the forum's bin/phpbbcli.php cron:run file regularly.
For forums with many users or user groups, it is recommended to set up a cronjob so that the first call of the forum to the beginning of the month is not unnecessarily delayed while the extension updates the traffic assignments.

Finally, if you want to deny these downlaods, you should exclude bots from the extension.
This option can be found as well as the same setting for guests in the General configuration module on the Protection page: "Global access for guests:" and "Global access for bots:."
You can thus set separately for guests and bots whether the download extension is made accessible at all for undeclared visitors or bots.
However, bots cannot download downloads because this is fundamentally disabled.