Verotel Is Afraid Of StatsRemote

[MadMax]

Got an interesting little email from Verotel today. Apparently they became aware that my statsremote is bombarding their server with an ungodly 16-52 queries per day total for the two affiliate accounts I have over there. I have been warned that any continuance of this veritable DDOS attack will result in the suspension of my account.

I'm not even pissed off here, just a bit disgusted. I genuinely find it just a little bit sad.


Since this is actually news for all StatsRemote users, I figure it bears sharing.

> Dear Jeff,
>
> ( Verotel ID: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ),
>
> It has come to our attention that you are using the services of
> www.statsremote.com to interpret your sales statistics.
>
> We have also noticed that your statsremote client is sending a total of 52
> requests to our controlcenter on a daily basis. These requests need to be
> reduced to one request per day.
> The data you are trying to retrieve gets updated only once a day, so
> multiple requests serve no purpose and put an unnecessary strain on our
> database.
>
> Please re-configure your statsremote client to update your statistics once
> a day as soon as possible.
>
> Please note that any account continuing to send multiple requests to our
> control center after 18-Jan-2006 via statsremote, runs the risk of
> immediate suspension.
>
>
> Kind Regards,
> Verotel Merchant Services
>
>



My Response:

Dear Verotel Merchant Services,

I have received your email regarding statsremote. It frankly amazes me that a billing company the size of Verotel, which must easily handle millions of database queries an hour, is so concerned about 52 database queries per day.

In fact, since I have two accounts checked by StatsRemote and they update every half hour (when SR is running, which is rarely more than 8 hours per day), you should be seeing an average of a whopping 16 queries per day or so. None of the 60 or so sponsors that I actively promote seem to have any problems handling this "strain".

It also surprises me that a company whose revenue is largely derived from affiliate sales would be so disturbed by a tool used by professional affiliate webmasters to manage their statistics. In fact, banning use of statsremote on Verotel accounts altogether is an interesting move. That is effectively what you're doing, since I would have to change a global setting for how often stats update; and I don't see myself or most other webmasters changing the way we interact with our businesses in order to comply with the network inadequacies of a third party processor.

I sincerely apologize for creating such a strain on your network. I have deleted my Verotel accounts from StatsRemote, so you won't be seeing any more queries from me. I had no idea that your network was so fragile, and I will make sure that I don't burden it with any more traffic than I already do.


Sincerely,

Jeff/MadMax