3,000,000+ robot submission attempts per month

prevention, or conversion?

[stevedob]

I used to run FFA pages, which I took down after 3+ years, at the end of October '02. The cgi script was replaced with one that properly returned a 410 status code (Gone Away) rather than just having submission services hit a 404 error, needlessly clogging the error log.

A number of these services have proved themselves incapable of responding sensibly to this change and, if anything, are hitting the non-functional script even harder than when it was performing its original job. One of the worst offenders is currently hitting at an average rate in excess of 100,000 per day.

The IP addresses they use (in the range 66.21.111.xxx) do not resolve to domain names, and the only info I have been able to gather is that the range belongs to Bellsouth.net. They have proved to be completely unhelpful (what a surprise!)

If I can't get them to stop hitting, is there anything I can get this otherwise useless traffic to do?

[bird]

Would be nice if you could hook up a power generator to your box, eh? ;)

Ask your ISP or hoster to drop all packets from the offending IPs at the router level.