Crawler Ettiquette

Thu Jan 24 11:42:37 UTC 2002

Hi,

> 	a) Obey robots.txt files
> 	b) Allow network admins to automatically have their 
> netblocks exempted on request
> 	c) Allow ISP's caches to sync with it.

I don't know if this is already on your list, but I'd also suggest "d) Rate-limiting of requests to a netblock/server". I haven't got any references immediately to hand, but I do seem to recall a crawler written in such a way that it remained "server-friendly" and would not fire off too many requests too quickly.

> ISPs who cache would have an advantage if they used the cache 
> developed by this project to load their tables, but I do not
> know if there is an internet-wide WCCP or equivalent out there
> or if the improvement is worth the management overhead.

It may be worth having a quick look at http://www.ircache.net/ - there is a database of known caches available through a WHOIS interface, amongst other things.

HTH,

Jonathan