Does anyone know what module or how to config apache to limit the maximum number of simultaneous connections from the same IP address? When a gang of scrapers descends on a site, each spawning a couple dozen sockets at the same time, it spoils the party for the legitimate visitors. Even search engine pause briefly between gets.
Thanks, that's exactly the kind of tool I'm looking for. Unfortunately, this level of tweaking is extremely knowledge intensive and because of the technically intimate nature of the mods, the package has to be totally solid and proven. I'll dig deeper on this one and see what kind of reviews it's getting. I understand that IPTABLES can also be configured to do low level filtering - again you need to be a level 4-5 admin to install and tune this. It would be nice if I could use a PHP session var (like time of last hit) and at the top if all my page requests check for too short a duration before the last hit, but that would rely on PHP sessions which I believe requires cookies and many/most agents aren't sophisticated enough to secure a session and maintain cookies as they scrape away.