Unwanted Banner Exchange

How to ban an IP?

[mintaf]

I recently inherited a domain that previously
ran a banner exchange. The banner code is still on a few sites and the webmasters won't remove the code (I have no idea why).

The problem is one site in particular calls the old banner script (ads.pl) every 3-4 minutes and it is really making a mess of my logs (accurate logs are very important on the current site). I have tried a few lame solutions but they all cause more of a load on the server than the 404 does.

Filtering the log files isn't viable currently and I am wondering if anyone has any ideas about another option?

Cheers

[ralnikov]

mintaf, i think it's a fine idea to tell what server software you're using. both iis & apache has options to drop requests came from set of ip addresses or subnets.
for iis: site properties -> directory security -> ip address and domain name restrictions -> edit

[Brett_Tabke]

A better idea? Find a banner server script and rename it to the old script. Then start serving your own ads. Join a banner broker (fastclick..etc) and setup a redirect. If it is significant traffic, it could be significant money.

With apache, you can ban a site via an .htaccess file.

deny from 12.8.102.5 123.123.256.456

etc...

[mintaf]

I'm using an Apache server on a Linux box. Serving my own ads was my first thought but the hits generated from the site are bogus and don't have any value (he just has that page set to refresh every few minutes).

I played around with both .htaccess and httpd.conf but it seemed the hits were still being logged. Should I give that another shot? Maybe do it right this time :)

Cheers

[Key_Master]

Throw this in your .htaccess file. Make sure the path to the ads.pl script is correct. It will redirect any banner requests to Yahoo.

Redirect 301 /cgi-bin/ads.pl [yahoo.com...]